
^ 





^& 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

iiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiititiiiiiiiiiiiilill 



012 026 389 4 



/^^- - 

I THREE SPEECHES 




BY 



HON. JAS. M. SCOVEL, 



DELIVERED IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
OP NEW JERSEY, 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION. 



1. NEW JERSEY FOR THE WAR. 

2. NEW JERSEY FOR THE UNION. 

3. NEW JERSEY FOR E.sTFRANCHISEMENT. 



Emerson. 
"It is the heart that makes the soldier." 

Napoleon 1st. 



CAMDEN, N. J.: 

PUBLISHED BY HORACE B. DICF, 




1870. 



THREE SPEECHES 



E 458 


.S43 


Copy 1 



BY 



HON. JAS. M. SCOVEL, 



DELIVERED IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
OF NEW JERSEY, 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION. 



1. NEW JERSEY FOR THE WAR. 

2. NEW JERSEY FOR THE UNION. 

3. NEW JERSEY FOR ENFRANCHISEMENT. 




CAMDEN, N. J.: 

PUBLISHED BY HORACE B. DICK, 
1870. 



IV, 



L45?^ 



Ca.mi>kx, N. J., March 2ith, 1870. 
I dedicate these speeches to Ulysses S. Grant, who took up 
the burdens of a New Republic where Abraham Lincoln laid 
them down ; who, after the Rights of Man had been trampled 
in the dust by the faithless administration of Andrew Johnson, 
has shewn by Patience, by Courage, and by Fidelity to Prin- 
ciple bow a President springing from the ranks of the People, 
at once a true man, a Soldier and a Statesman, may re-create . 
Republic, now, more than e.er., the admiration of Man and 
the wonder of the World. ^ 






■^^ 



INTRODUCTION 



As illustrating an important era, these specciies now first 
collected, form a valuable addition to the political history 
•of New Jersey during the war for national supremacy, which 
resulted in the emancipation and enfranchisement of the 
black race. 

James M. Scovel was born in Harrison, Ohio, Jan. i6th, 
1833. His father was the Rev. Sylvester Scovel, an eminent 
minister of the Presbyterian Church; a native of Massa- 
chusetts, who removed to the West and fdled the Presidency 
of Hanover College, Ind. ; from which institution h.c had 
previously received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. 
Respected for his energy of character, theological and 
literary attainments, and beloved for his amiability cf dis- 
position, his benevolence and consistent piety, ho died of 
cholera on the 4th of July, 1849, bequeathing to his son his 
own advanced ideas of the rights of man and his consistent 
hatred of oppression and wrong. 

His grandfather (on the maternal side) was the Hon- 
J"ame3 Matlack, who represented this District (then (}lou- 
•cester county) for two terms in Congress. 

Mr. Scovel, in 1852, delivered the valedictory address in 
Hanover College, Ind., and taught school for one year in 
Tipton CO., Tenn., where he first obtained a practical 
knowledge of the workings of " tlio peculiar institution called 
slavery." 

In 1853 he became a student of law in the office of 
Attorney General Browning, in Camden, N. J., and was 
•admitted to practice at the bar in Nov., 18-56. 



Mr. Hcovc4 was a iirm and consistent follower of Stephen 
A. Douglas, when the treasonable designs of the Southern 
leaders^forced a war upon the North. A democrat in his 
sentiments, he had no lot or part with those men, who 
sustaining the nomination of Breckinridge, would have 
sacrificed the unity of tlie States to the aggressive and ab- 
horrent policy of the nationalization of human slavery. 

New Jersey at that time Avas eminently conservative, and 
our young aspirant would perhaps the more readily have 
obtained political advancement from the then dominant 
Democratic party at tlie sacrifice of his ideas ot justice: 
Mr. Scovel,niowever. accepted no such issue; he became one 
of the four headers of the straight Douglas element, and the 
formation of an "Independent Douglas Ticket" resulted in 
giving a majority of the electoral vote of the State to 
Abraham Lincoln. (Since which time New Jersey has 
invariably been Democratic on Presidential issues.) 

On the result of that election Mr. Scovel advocated strong 
radical measures. In 1862, after a sharp and decisive 
contest, ho was elected by a handsome majority to the State 
Legislature, from the 1st District over D. A. Hall, Demo- 
cratic candidate. 

Naturally gravitating to the leadership of the Republican 
element in the House, on the delivery of his memorable 
speech against the " New Jersey Peace Resolutions," the 
minds of the people throughout the Union distinctly and 
emphatically recognized in him the very head and front of 
the uncompromising opposition to treason and retrogression 
in the State. 

At that time the nation seemed in the throes of dissolution. 
The imbecility, incapacity or treason of a General in whom 
all had confided, had resulted in great disaster to our arms. 
Hurled back from the gates of Richmond after a struggle 
which it was hoped would have dismembered and crushed 
the serpent of rebellion, our army fled before a pursuing foe 
who beleaguered the National Capital. Open traitors and 



well meaning but timid men clamored for '^ Peace," even at 
the sacrifice of honor. The efforts of this element cul- 
minated in two distinct propositions — one, a bill to arm 
40,000 State militia, under the leadership of a distinguished 
son of New Jersey, for tlie avowed purpose of resisting the 
power of the Federal government; the other, a series of 
resolutions proposing to hold conference with certain Rebel 
leaders, with a view to " a satisfactory adjustment of diffi- 
culties." 

Oa the presentation of these Mr. Scovel arose. In a 
patriotic phillippic, in which the natural rights of man, love 
of country, reason, invective and a sense of dignity were 
invoked to crush the efforts of those whose interpretation of 
'•peace" was but a sj'nonym for national degradation; with 
the energy and eloquence of Mirabeau ho pointed -out the 
<ianger that lay concealed beneath the smootli platitudes of 
diplomacy. He rent the flimsy veil of specious sophistry 
that covertly counselled dishonor, by the weight of argu- 
ments as potent and convincing as those of the English 
Burke, and threatened that should an armed opposition to 
the government be encouraged by the passage of these bills, 
he would himself " arouse the people from school-house and 
iiill-top, and by forcible means resist this treasonable 
scheme." 

The efiect was instantaneous. The bills vreve modified 
and afterwards withdrawn. His efforts on tliat occasion 
earned him the life enduring friendship of Abraham Lincoln, 
Thaddeus Stevens, Edwin M. Stanton, and others. The 
speech, fully reported in the New York Tribune, won the 
applause of the nation and the regard and encomiums of 
Horace Greeley. 

In 1863, Mr. Scovel, appointed by Mr. Lincoln Commiii- 
sioner for the Draft, resigned his position to accept the 
nomination of the Republican party for the Senate. A 
powerful faction who distrusted the integrity of any man 
who had ever roted with the Democrats, opposed him. After 



the most severe political contest known in the county of 
Camden, he was elected over Jno. R. Graham, a deservedly^ 
popular nominee, by a majority of 113. 

In the State Senate he won new laurels. The conviction 
that the nation needed the services of the loyal black race, 
who were anxious to lend their stalwart arms toward the 
suppression of the rebellion, found but little favor in New 
Jersey. Democrats and many conservative Republicans 
alike agreed in opposition to such an " impolitic measure/^' 
and the result was the presentation of a bill prohibiting the 
enlistment of colored troops in the State, under penalty of 
fine and imprisonment. As when in the House, Mr. Scovel 
in the Senate rose to the emergency and confounded the 
counsels of those unwilling to grant to the despised race the 
privilege of fighting and dying for their country. We have 
no space for extended quotation in our brief resume, but 
may remark that the concluding portions of his speech on 
the subject evince a power of eloquence not unworthy of the 
greatest orators of ancient or modern time — the classic force 
of Demosthenes, or the flowing rhetoric of the Roman 
Cicero ; although it is stated it was hastily made, mostly 
improvised, and in no case supervised or corrected. In his 
third speech, on " Our Relations with the Rebel States,'' 
Mr. Scovel elaborates and re-affirms his life-long devotion to 
liberty and the interests of the colored race. For them he 
claims suffrage and a full political equality, and argues 

" That policy that would call the black to our aid in 
putting down the rebellion, and then turn him over to the 
charity of the man whom he fought against, and wLlo once 
owned him, must be founded in inequality, injustice, and in. 
infinite meanness." 

Always a persistent advocate of the XlVth Amendment:^ 
lohich but for his casting vote when President of the JS'eir- 
Jersey Senate, would have been lost therein, he has been 
equally strenuous in urging the adoption of that just enact- 
ment known as the XVth Constitutional Amendment. His 



record is clear, tlefined and unmistakable on the slavery and 
emancipation policies. Otlier Republicans have faltered, 
fearing the loss of popularity or election in counties where 
radical measures were of uncertain issue, but at all times 
wherever he has expressed an opinion, it has been in the 
advocacy of "equal and exact justice to all."' 

We have said that Mr. Scovel's speeches afford evidence 
of great oratorical power. To this may be added, a com- 
prehensive grasp of subject and issue involved, and a 
political forecast that is alone proof of statesmanship. To 
youth, health and courage in his favor, a magnetic power to 
enchain his hearers when addressing them, he joins a fear- 
lessness that is the true criterion of manly independence. 
His friends appreciate and his enemies respect his talents 
and energy. 

With no wish to re-open old sources of dissension, it 
becomes necessary in the interest of truth to allude to a 
certain event, that at the time, in tiie minds of many, 
seriously affected Mr. v^covel's popularity. We shall refer 
to it briefly but emphatically. 

In 18G5, on the occasion of tljc selection of U. S. Senator, 
a majority of both Houses in joint ballot decided and de- 
clared that a plurality vote should elect. In accordance 
with this resolution a Democrat was chosen. A powerful 
effort was afterward (successfully) made to unseat' him. on 
the ground that a plurality vote was illegal. Mr. Scovel 
refused to assist in what he conceived to be an unjust 
measure, even though his own party were thereby benefitted. 
^Ir. Lincoln, in a statement made, declared, that in hi.-< 
opinion the Democratic Senator was legally and rightfully 
elected, and Mr. Trumbull and others of the Judiciary 
Committee of the United States Senate reported likewise. 

The statement broadcast, of Mr. Scovel's •' defection '' from 
the Republicans, spread far and wide. Interested parties 
influenced well-meaning men into the belief of sinister 
motives on the part of the " recreant Senator,"' and a whirl- 



■wiud of opprolirium, invective and opposition was evolved 
that might well have crushed a timid or corrupt man, or at 
all events forced him wholly into the ranks of the Democratic 
party : but Mr. Scovel's instincts were not allied to dead 
political issues. He did not act as self-constituted political 
prophets predicated or desired, and after a delay, yielded 
solely in order to save the XlVth Amendment, (then under 
consideration), against his well-conceived ideas of justice. 

Political ostracism for a time attended him. Newspapers, 
organizations, <fcc.. vied in hurling epithets, anathemas and 
•'manufacturing public opinion;" but he pursued the even 
tenor of his way, uninfluenced or unawed in his convictions 
as to the righteousness of his motives. 

Popularity is often cheaply earned Viy yielding to the 
dictum of self constituted cliques, but the people will not 
always intrust their interests in the hands of those whose 
political consistency is evinced in an inordinate fondness for 
office, and whose greatest ability seems demonstrated in the 
persistent tenacity with which they cling to the emoluments 
and spoils of political preferment. 

Terrible as are the necessities of strife and bloodshed, yet 
the war has been prolific of great and incalculable results. 
In a few years liave been enacted laws that would have 
taken decades of peaceful legislation to accomplish. 

Onward rolls the car of .})rogress, crushing all olistacles 
that would else impede its way : 

" There is a Divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough hew them as we maj." 

Rights must be acknowledged and respected; folly and 
fraud overcome and subdued; tyranny be denied and up- 
rooted, and wisdom be imparted and received; then 
national greatness and glory shall consist in relieving, 
blessing and elevating all in the knowledge of truth, irre- 
spective of race, clime or condition. 

Thaddeus Stevens, the " distinguished commoner," whose 
efforts in behalf of human liberty were only suspended hj 



9 

his death, had a full appreciation of, and unbounded con- 
fidence in the integrity of Mr. Scovel; as his appended 
letter, written shortly before his decease, evidences. Abra- 
ham Lincoln and Edwin M. Stanton bear testimony also in 
the letters over their signatures. 

HORACE B. DICK. 
Camdex, N. J. 



LETTERS. 

House op Representatives. 
Washington, D. C, April, 1869. 
Dear Scovel : — 1 wish you were in Congress to aid me: 
cannot you get there next time. Alaljania is still out, our 
friends not agreeing in some points. Try and come and 
help us. We are not yet out of the woods. 

TflADDEUS STEVPJNS. 
J. M. Scovel, Esq. 



Hon. W. H. Seivard : — Jas. M. Scovel, named within, 
carried a very close Senatorial District in New Jersey for 
US at the election, and is really one of our best friends. 
Sec. of State, please see and hear him. 

A. LINCOLN. 

Nov. 18, 1863. 



Washington City, 16 Sep., '68. 
Dear Sir : — Your note of the 12th inst. reached me this 
morning, and 1 hasten to say that you are entirely right in 
the opinion that Mr. Lincoln reposed much confidence in 
you as an active, zealous and faithful supporter of your 
government, and a true patriot earnestly bent upon the 
suppression of the rel)ellion. 

Yours truly, 

EDWIN M. STANTON. 
Jas. M. Scovel, Esq. 
Camden, JV. J. 



NEW JERSEY FOR THE WAR. 



KELIVEKED IN THE NEW JERSEY HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, MARCH 17, ISCS 



The New Jersey House of Assembly having under con- 
sideration the Joint Resolutions in relation to Federal Affairs, 
commonly called '' The Peace Eesolutions," Mr. Scovel said : 

Mr. Speaker : I rise to advocate the minority report of 
the Committee on Federal Eelations. If I no longer believed 
in God, or if I had ceased to love my country, I might be 
heard in advocacy of the peace resolutions offered and sus- 
tained by the dominant party ia both Houses of the Legisla- 
ture. Mr. Speaker, I know that this is not a time for private 
griefs, but as 1 am charged with having renounced the party 
with which I formerly acted, I may be allowed briefly to 
make my defence against the accusation. 1 am content to 
Bubmit myself to the asperities and calumnies of politics. In 
the language of Lord Bolingbroke, " I have not renounced 
my country nor my friends ; and by my friends I mean all 
those and those alone who are such to their country, by 
whatever name they have been or may be still distinguished. 
and though in that number there should be men of whose 
past ingratitude, injustice or malice I might complain on my 
account with the greatest reason. These I will never re- 
nounce. In their prosperity they shall never hear of me — 
in their adversity always." The sincerity and tenacity with 
which I followed the fortunes of Stephen A. Douglas are 



12 

known to all wlio know me. I was a witness at Baltimore 
of the shameless betrayal of the statesman of Illinois. If he 
had served the South too faithfully, he had bitter cause to 
repent of that service. When truest to the chosen measures 
of the South — 1 mean the doctrine of non-interference with 
slavery — he was displaced by Jefferson Davis from his posi- 
tion as Chairman of the Committee on Territories. When 
faithful at Charleston to the traditions and the principles of 
his party, he was then betrayed, and the betrayal made com- 
jDlete, a few months later, at the city of Baltimore. It was 
in 1848 the Democratic Convention was of opinion that to 
co-iintcnauce any interference with slavery by Cono-rcss was 
dangerous to the peace and harmony of the country. We 
live history so fast that it is well, on an occasion like this, 
when the heart of every patriot is tremulous with anxiety 
for the safety of the Republic, to go back and examine the 
past, even though we should tread on "ashes thinly covering 
lires." In the great speech of Mr. Douglas, delivered in the 
Senate, May 15th and 16th, 1860, he says, speaking of Mr. 
Yancey's desire for the interference with slavery by Con- 
gress, " I shrink with horror from the consequences to which 
his principles would lead the Republic." Well might he say 
this, for none knew better than he, what price the South 
would exact for their fealty to the Union. With his faults, 
and these were the foils to set off his virtues, he was, in 
power and magnanimity, the peer of any man in America; 
and it is one of the proudest recollections of my political 
career, and one I shall bear with me to the latest hour of 
my life, that I followed, with simplicity and steadfastness, 
his waning fortunes, and stood by the banner of Douglas till 
it waved above his grave. He sleeps now on the sliores of 
Lake Michigan, where corroding care cannot reach him, 
happily removed from any participation in these the saddest 
scenes that ever marked with gloom the slow but triumphant 
advance of human liberty. Let us compose the pall firmly 
und decently over the features of this patriot statesman, who 



13 

amid the pangs of dissolution instructed his children to be 
true to the Constitution and the Government of their Country. 
Would to God that his warning voice could reach his 
countrymen who have abandoned his teachings. His predic- 
tions were verified. In March, 1860, the President of a 
Confederacy over every foot of "which tlie old flag will yet 
float, oftered a resolution in the Senate, among other things, 
which declared : 

'• That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, 
whether by direct legislation or legislation of an indirect 
and unfriendly character, possess power to annul or impair 
the constitutional rights of any citizen of the United States 
to take his slave property into the common territories, and 
there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial con- 
dition remains." 

[Jeff. Davis' Speech oa Relation of States. 

The only statesman of the South dissenting was Alex- 
ander Stephens, of Ga., in the following letter dated Craw- 
fordsviile, Ga., May 9th, 1862, written after the Charleston 
Convention. He says : 

" In the first place I assume as an unquestionable fact, 
that non-intervention as stated, has been for many years 
received, recognized and acted upon as the settled doctrine 
of the South. By non-intervention I mean the principle 
that Congress shall pass no law on the subject of slavery in 
the Territories, either for or against it in any way — that 
they shall not interfere or act upon it at all — or, in the 
express words of Mr. Calhoun, the great leader, that "Con- 
gress shall leave the whole subject where the Constitution 
and the great principles of self-government place it." This 
has been eminently a Southern doctrine. It was announced 
by Mr. Calhoun in his speech in the Senate on the 27th 
of June, 1848; and after two years of discussion, it was 
adopted as the basis of the adjustment finally made in 
1850. It was tlie demand of the South, put forth by the 
South, and since its establishment has been again and again 
afiirmed as the settled policy of the South, by party conven- 
tions and State Legislatures, in every form that a people 
can give authoritative expression to their will and wishes. 
This cannot now be matter of dispute. It is history, as 
indelibly fixed upon the record as the fact that the colony 
of Georgia was settled under the auspices of Oglethorpe. 



14 

" I refer to this matter of history counected with the sub- 
ject under consideration, 1)arely as a standing point, to shovr, 
how we stand in relation to it. It is not a new subject. It 
has been up before, and whether rightly or wrongly it has 
been decided and settled just as tlie South asked that it 
should be — not, however, without a great effort and a pro- 
tracted struggle. The question now is: Shall the South 
abandon her own position in that decision and settlement? 
This is the question virtually presented by the action of the 
seceders from the Charleston Convention and the grounds 
upon which they based their action^ or stated in other 
words, it amounts to this — whether the Southern States after 
all that has been said on the subject should now reverse 
their previous course and demand Congressional interven- 
tion for the protection ot slavery in the Territories, as a 
condition of their remaining longer in the Union. For I 
take it for granted that it would be considered by all as the 
most mischievous Jolly to demand, unless we intend to push 
the issue to its ultimate and legitimate result. Shall the 
South then make the demand of Congress, and when made, 
in case of failure to obtain it, secede from the Union, as a 
portion of her Delegates (some under instructions, and some 
from their own free will) seceded from the Convention, on 
their failure to get it granted there "' 

'•Thus stands the naked question, as 1 understand it" 
(and no man in all the South understood it better than Mr. 
Stephens) " presented by the action of the seceders in all its 
dimensions, its length, breadth, and depth — in all its magni- 
tude * "■ my judgment is against the demand. 

" The great question then is, shall we stand by our prin- 
ciples, or shall we. cutting loose from our moorings where 
we have been safely anchored so many years, launch out 
into unknown seas, upon new and perilous adventures, under 
the guidance of those wlio prove themselves to have no more 
fixedness of jrurpose or stability as to objects of policy, than 

tlic shifting winds bv which we siiall i)e driven ?" 

■?:- ■-■ ■" -■:• " * ^- ■)(- ^- * 

" There is a tendency everywliere, not only at the North, 
but at the South to strife, discussion, disorder and anarchy. 
It is against this that the sober minds and reflecting men 
everywhere should now be called upon to guard. My 
opinion then, is that Delegates should be sent to the ad- 
journed Convention at Baltimore. The demand made at 
Charleston by the seceders ouglit not to be insisted on. 



15 

Harmony being restored upon tliisi point, a nomination can 
doubtless be made of some man whom the party everywhere 
can support with the same zeal and ardor with which they 
entered and waged the contest in 185G, where the same 
principles were involved." 

" If in this there be a failure, let the responsibility not 
rest upon us. Let our hands be clean of all blame. Let 
there be no cause for casting censure at our door. If, in the 
end the great National Democratic Party — the strong liga- 
ment that has so long bound aiid held the Union together, 
shaped its policy and controlled its destinies, and to which 
we have so often looked with a hope that seldom failed, as 
the only party North on whicli to rely in the most trying 
hours when constitutional rights were imperilled goes down 
— let it not be said to us in the midst of the disasters that 
may ensue " you did it." In any and every event let not 
the reproach of Punic faith rest upon our name. If every 
thing else has to go down, let our untarnished honor at least 
survive the wreck." 

Upon the bloody plains of Kansas, says Jeffersor. Davis, 
'' we have tried the doctrine of letting Slavery take care of 
itself. Now Congress must take care of it or we will take 
care of the North and Congress too, since we are the master 
race ! " Surely Slavery is becoming the Colossus whicli 
bestrides the world ! It is true, in Indiana, when Edward 
Hannegan was elected United States Senator, and disgraced 
America at Berlin, every other Democratic candidate gave 
his written pledge to the caucus of his party that he opposed 
the extension of Slavery. It is true tl:at Henry Clay had 
said that he would never consent that the everlasting curse 
of liuman bondage should set its foot upon free soil, but 
Jefferson Davis was about to change all this. John C 
Breckinridge announced m his letter of acceptance that the 
" inexorable logic " of his position was that property in 
negroes shpuld be protected in all the Territories. The 
North began to say we do not intend to dictate to the South, 
i)ut the South shall not dictate to us. For these many 
years Slavery has been working evil under the sun. Bench 
and bar. and hall and pulpit, and counting room, and field 



IG 

and fireside, have been tainted with iis presence. It has 
tampered with public and private honesty. It has debased, 
degraded and brutalized American freemen, marring their 
birthright. It has turned their beautiful garden into a 
wilderness. The ignorance that disgraces, the rice that 
demoralizes, the barrenness that lays waste the South, are 
all its work. It has made our country a stumbling-block, a 
hissing and a by-word to the nations. It has introduced 
discord and brawling, insolence, rapacity and murder into 
our National councils. The bitter hatred that fires the 
JSouth against the North is all its doing. It has despoiled 
US of our honor ; it has poisoned our fountains ; it has pol- 
luted our holy things. The wide-spread treachery that has 
desolated us like a plague and made us feel as if the solid 
ground were failing beneath our feet, had its root and rise 
in it.* In our own State how has this evil worked ? Read 
the latest humiliation that has fallen npon us. I refer to the 
election of a Senator in New Jersey. And while I know 
that the cup of bitterness is full for those who would not 
fall down and worship the golden image set up by the sons 
of Essex, I would add not another drop to its bitter waters. 
Would that the graceful pen of the historian could picture 
the scene. Who is it tliat enters with so gay a step into the 
Senatorial tournay, his 

" Cohorts all gleaming with purple aud gold ?" 
The contest inside the lists is between Bullion and Brain, 
and so fickle is the fate of war, that Union and Morris go 
down before the charge that bold rider made with the 
helmet of Gold, while Democracy shouts " long live William 
of Essex," and the people do not respond amen. In the 
facts just stated, I find the reason and justification of my 
present position, i liavc not changed. I upheld the South 
and her institutions, so far and so long as this could be 
rightfully done ; I defended slavery within the limits it 
could properly and justly claim, nay I was ready to concede 



* Gail Hamilton. 



17 

to it so far as concession 'was safe. But 1 was not willing 
that the slave power should assume the place of the govern- 
ment, and that all the interests of the country should be 
made subservient to it. I was not willing that the Demo- 
cratic party itself should bo reduced to the low condition of 
being made an instrument, a mere convenience, to be used 
or discarded at pleasure, to be turned back at the bidding of 
its southern masters upon its own course, and made to repu- 
diate its own professions and principles. I am for the 
Nation against a section ; for the Republic rather than a 
party. This is my answer to the charge of unfaithfulness. 
But, Mr. Speaker, in approaching the discussion of these 
resolutions, it is well to inquire what are the causes which 
led New Jersey to assume the position of hostility to the 
General Government. If it is denied that the dominant 
party are in concert with the leaders of Rebellion, why is it 
that your cannons are fired and treason preached at Tem- 
perance Hall in celebration of the close of the last Congress, 
— a parliament of men who have shown no higher desire 
than to be the supporters of a good Government and the 
guardians of public liberty? But these friends of a mon- 
strous rebellion against humanity and civilization must be 
taught tliat the more genius, industry and spirit are employed 
to destroy, the harder the task of saving our country be- 
comes ; but the duty increases with the difficulty. In such 
exigencies it is not enough that genius be opposed to genius; 
spirit must be matched by spirit. They who go about to 
destroy are animated from the first l^y ambition and avarice 
and despair itself. With that urbanity for which he is re- 
markable, the member from Morris (Mr. Vanatta) will allow 
me to call his attention to his speech delivered at Trenton 
on July 27th, 1860. He then asserted that the policy of the 
country which would ultimately triumph was the localizing 
of slavery, and further said of the proposed change in 
policy, which should make slavery national : 

"The people vrill say, Why this sudden change? In 



attempting to turn round such a square corner we shall have 
a smash-up. After a change on such a vital question will 
not the people say they cannot trust us ? After twelve years 
trying to support a character for fairness let us preserve our 
honor and self-respect by being consistent to ourselves and 
to the State of New Jersey." 

At the same meeting, Rodman M. Price denounced a pro- 
position to unite with the friends of Breckinridge as the 
*•' most deceptive and fraudulent proposition he ever heard." 
And in less than one year, ex-Governor Rodman M. Price, 
who thought James Buchanan " one of the greatest political 
knaves of the country," (I quote The True Amtricayi^ of July 
2Tth, I860,) published to all the world his deliberate convic- 
tion, in these words : " I say emphatically she (New Jersey) 
should go with the South, from every wise, prudential and 
patriotic reason." [Letter of April 9th, 1861.] On the same 
day, desecrating the Chamber which is now occupied by the 
Legislature, met another Convention composed, in my 
opinion, of the enemies of the Government, more than one 
member of which I have heard threaten that the streets of 
New Jersey should run with blood before a Northern army 
should leave our soil to tight against the South. One of the 
members of this House from Bergen (T. Dunn English) 
whose poetry may be excellent, but whose political opinions 
merit the scorn and execration of every patriot in the land, 
and also the very distinguished Senator from Bergen, were 
chosen to that Convention. They re-afiirmed the platform 
of 1856, only to abandon it at the behest of Southern con- 
spirators. How faithfully they have served the South, let 
the history of these times show, when it comes to be written. 
Certainly, the impartial verdict of the time will be that if 
Jefferson Davis was like Satan in Pandemonium — 
" In form and gesture, proudly eminent," 

he had followers, if less distinguished, quite as notorious, in 
the person of Clement L. Vallandigham, Rodman M. Price, 
and the Senator from Bergen. Thus it is, while our brave 
sons have met death in defence of the honor and perpetuity 
of our Union, New .Tersey, by a shameful betrayal of prin- 



19 

■ciple, has taken the basest position to which a State can 
descend. We elevate faction above patriotism, and tolerate 
«nen " who sin as^ainst posterity as well as against their own 
age, and when the consequences of their own crimes are 
over, the consequences of their example remain." In his 
speech, the Senator from Bergen says he was elected on a 
platform '• in favor of a vigorous prosecution of peace," and 
as proud to say he stands on tliat platform yet. From the 
Senator's haste at an early hour of the session to ofter his 
peace resolutions, we had been led to believe that he was 
cordially in favor, with Mr. Maliony, of a vigorous prosecu- 
tion of peace. His efforts certainly, had they l)een given in 
an earlier revolution, would entitle him to distinguished con- 
sideration among the Tories in our first struggle for inde- 
pendence. But I am grateful in assurance that the Tories 
were not the one hundredth part of the American colonies, 
while the Rebel slaveholders in the rebellious States, for 
whom the member fi'om Bergen apparently holds a brief, 
constitute, all told, less than one hundred and twenty-eight 
of the people of the United States, and less one fiftieth 
part of the inhabitants of their own districts. And, Sir, I 
venture the prediction this day, that the disloyal citizens of 
New Jersey bear about the same proportion to those who 
.•stand by the Union unconditionally, as the Tories did to the 
patriots of 1776. I shall refer briefly to what the gentle- 
man says about the Proclamation of Emancipation : 

" Now, Mr. President, as to the Proclamation itself, I 
express my surprise at the exposition of the law of nations, 
given by the gentleman from Passaic. Does the gentleman 
suppose that an enemy has the right to confiscate private 
property within the invaded territory ? The reverse is as 
old as the law of war itself. It is doubtless true that prop- 
erty belonging to an enemy, found within the territory of a 
belligerent, was formerly confiscated. If this country were 
at war with Great Britain, private property belonging to an 
enemy might have been confiscated under the old law, but 
that law has been abandoned long ago. Private property 
cannot be taken. Under the law as laid down by the Senator 
from Passaic, to whom would the private property of the 



20 

countries overrun hy Napoleon belong? What would have- 
become of the private property in Mexico if that had been 
the law? But, Sir, let me quote on authority bearing di- 
rectly upon this point: John Quincy Adams, in 1812, being 
Secretary of State, laid down this principle : They (the 
British) had no right to make any such emancipation promises 
to the negro. The principle is that the emancipation of the 
enemy's slaves is not among the acts of legitimate war; as 
relates to the owners it is a destruction of private property 
nowhere warranted by the usage of war. No such right is 
acknowledged as the law of war by writers who admit any 
limitations. The right to put to death all prisoners in cold 
blood, without special cause, might as well be pretended to 
he a law of war, or the right to use poisoned weapons, or to 
assassinate." 

It seems to me tliat the Senator from Bergen is unfortunate 
in his remarks as well as in his quotations. The Constitution 
allows confiscation. The right to confiscate is derived from 
a state of war. It is the right of war. It originates in the 
principle of preservation. It is the means of weakening the 
enemy and strengthening ourselves. The right of confisca- 
tion belongs to the Government as the necessary power and 
duty of making war offensive or defensive. Whiting on the 
war poioer of the President, p. 52. Every capture of enemy's 
ammunition or arms is in substance a confiscation, without 
its formalities ; the exercise of this right has been sanctioned 
by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. 
In the case of Cross et at v. Howard, it was clearly laid 
down as the opinion of the Supreme Court, that the Presi- 
dent of the United States, as Constitutional Commander-in 
Chief of the Army and Navy, had the power to authorize 
the military and naval commanders of the United Stptes' 
forces in California to exercise the belligerent rights of a 
conqueror, and to form a civil and military government for 
the conquered territory; and that the formation of the civil 
government in California, when it was done, was the lawful 
exercise of a belligerent right over a conquered territory. 
This, I contend, is a stronger case than can arise from the 
state of the case which the resolutions before this house 
would designate as " the subjugation of any of the Statea- 



21 

with a view to their reduction to a territorial condition." 
The United States had made a treaty of peace with Mexico. 
By the conclusion of the treaty of peace, the military Gov- 
ernment which was established over them under the laws of 
war, as recognized by the practice of all civilized nations, 
liad ceased to derive its authority from this source of power. 
But was there, for this reason, no Government in California? 
Are life, liberty, and property under the protection of no 
existing authorities? Fortunately they are not reduced to 
tliis sad condition. The termination of the war left an 
•existing Government, a Government de facto, in full opera- 
ration, and this will continue, with the presumed consent of 
the people, until Congress shall provide for them a " Terri- 
torial Government." The great law of necessity justifies 
this conclusion. What necessity does the ex-President of 
-the United States refer to, if not a legal and constitutional 
necessity, whether you call it civil or military ? Here we 
liave James K. Polk, James Buchanan, and Gen, Halleck, 
then Secretary of War for the Territory of California, ap- 
proving and sustaining the domination of the military over 
the civil authority, and going so far as to sustain a pro- 
visional civil government after the source of militar}' power 
was exhausted. This law of necessity, founded on the laws 
■of nature and of nations, is not of recent origin, as the 
•gentlemen on the other side maintain. In how much does 
•our situation difler since 1847 ? Then was the Constitution 
.strong enough to admit the conquest of California ; to allow 
military authority, and after that the establishment of civil 
authority, without any enactment of Congress. Now the 
belligerent subjects who are traitors have levied war against 
the Government under which they live. Can we enforce the 
laws? — or, failing in that, can we subjugate the States in 
which they live? (and for us this word " subjugation" has 
fio terrors) and can we do it under powers granted by the 
Constitution? We think so. Those who formed the Union 
;Eneant that it should be perpetual. Chief Justice Marshall 
iBaid " Congress may pass such laws as it may deem neces- 



22 

sary to carry into execution the great powers granted by 
the Constitution." These powers ought to exist without;, 
limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or define the 
extent and variety of the national exigencies, and the cor- 
respondent extent and variety of the means necessary to- 
satisfy them. The mistake made by those who denounce a» 
unconstitutional the vast powers conferred by Congress upon 
the President is their failing to distinguish between the two> 
classes of powers belonging to Congress and to the Execu- 
tive, altogetiier difierent in their nature, and often incom- 
patible with each other — the war power and the peace 
power. The one is defined and restricted by the Constitu- 
tion itself, the other, the war power, is limited only by the- 
laws and usages of nations. The power is tremendous, but 
it is constitutional ; and if need be, the liberties of the- 
subject must be temporarily suspended, and that without 
violence to civil liberty, if the necessities of the nation 
require it. Rebels in front and in the rear of our armies- 
understand this. The issue is made up. Two years we- 
have trusted to the God of Battles, and we can still trust in 
him, animated and sustained by the consciousness of the- 
high trust given into our keeping by Liberty and Humanity. 
It was in 1820 John Quincy Adams used the language' 
attributed to him ; and if any gentleman will take occasion 
to refer to The Congressional Globe (XXXIlId Congress,. 
1841-42, vol. 11, p. 424), he will find that Mr. Adams uses 
the following language concerning that statement: " It was' 
utterly agaiust my judgment and wishes ; but I was obliged 
to submit, and prepare the necessary despatches." Would* 
you know what his sentiments, matured and solemnly pro- 
nounced, are ? If so, read liis speech of the 2Gth of May,. 
1836, in the House of Eeprcsentatives. He says in that 
nervous English for which he was remarkable : 

" I do not admit there is even among the peace powers of 
Congress no such authority, but in war there are many ways> 
T)y which Congress not only have the authority, but are 
bound to interfere with tlie institution of Slavery in the 
States. Do you imagine that vour Congress will have nQ> 



23 

constitutional authority to interfere with the institution of 
Slavery in any way in the States of this Confederacy ? Sir; 
they must and will interfere with it, perhaps to sustain it by 
war, perhaps to abolish it by treaties of peace; and they 
will not only possess the constitutional power so to interfere, 
but they will be bound in duty to do it by the express pro- 
vision of the Constitution itself. From the instant that 
your Slave-holding States become the theatre of war, civil, 
servile, or foreign — from that instant the war power of 
Congress extends to interfere with the institution of Slavery, 
in every way by which it can be interfered with. * * ^^ 
I lay this down as the law of nations. I sa}^ that military 
authority takes, for the time, the place of all municipal 
institutions, and Slavery amongst others; and that under 
that state of things, so far from its being true that the State 
Avhere Slavery exists has the exclusive management of the 
subject, not only the President of the United States, but the 
commander of the army has power to order the universal 
emancipation of the slaves. I have given here more in 
detail a principle vfhich I have asserted on this floor before 
now, and of which I have no more doubt than that you, Sir, 
occupy that chair." 

Mr. Speaker, these are plain Vv'ords ; they are the de- 
liberate utterance of a statesman. He is a free man whom 
the truth makes free. The people of New Jersey have con- 
quered their sterile soil — the white sails of our commerce 
catch the favoring breath of every sea; but, Sir, the people 
of New Jersey have yet to conquer their prejudices. When 
shall we rise above the petty strife of partizans ? Why 
quarrel about measures of policy when a common enemy is 
at the throat of the nation, and that nation is struggling for 
life ? And ye preachers of the gospel of peace, would yoti 
waft back this accursed Rel)ellion with a strip of paper? 
Will your talk about the Constitution bring back our heroic 
dead, or will it save the living? Brave men have an in- 
stinctive aversion for traitors and cowards, and they are 
preparing to meet the new enemy in the rear as well as the 
Rebel foe on our front. Sir, it is not yet two years since 
that fatal shot was fired on that helpless garrison in Charles- 
ton Harbor, and in those yea is how many have been the 
eventful hours when " we could stretch an hour into eternity, 



24 

01- crowd eternity into an hour !" We now stand at the very 
crisis of our fate. If we are bold and vi,uilant and active, 
the good ship will weather the storm. Cut we hear threats 
of revolution in the North. From whom? From that 
tender party of peace, who chose to lie partizans to do 
Jefferson Davis' bidding-, rather than be patriots on the side 
of the Union. They tell us that there must be a reconstruc- 
tion on a new basis, leaving outside of this Vallandigham 
Confederacy all agitation cf this Slavery question, and from 
which New England must l.>e excluded ! Sir, these are only 
new foes with old faces. Twenty-five years ago John Ran- 
dolph of Eoanoke said, " To-day ! to-day ! let New England 
be blotted out." Hodie ! Hodie I Carthago delenda est. 
But, Sir, New England is not yet blotted out; while Vir- 
ginia, the Mother of Presidents, and alas ! the parent of 
Henry A. Wise, is a howling wilderness — part of whose 
rich and cultivated fields have been seven times despoiled 
by our advancing and retreating hosts. God takes care of 
his universe, and while we cannot nnderstand all the prob- 
lems which surround tliis momentous and terrible struggle, 
it is enough for ns to know that God's purpose is over it all, 
and that these peace patriots may as well hold up their 
printed resolutions before the lightnings of heaven as to stay 
the tide of this righteous war. We must meet the Slavejy 
question like men. And I do not envy the head or the heart 
of that man who will pander to the passions of the populace 
and rise into place by appealing to prejudices against an 
inferior race. Sir, what right has Slavery to come begging 
and fawning at the feet of Civilization ? The Senator from 
Bergen quotes Douglas now, Mhom he persecuted when 
alive, by saying that this is a Government for white men. 
We admit it. We do not believe that thirty millions of the 
Anglo-Saxon race must yield this continent to the black 
man, but we might as well admit that the negro has rights 
which white men are bound to respect. Justice Taney to the 
contrary notwithstanding. But as well might Charles 
JjCwis, with hands dripping in t!io ItJood of liis unoiTending 



or, 



victim, plead, as a reason why sentence of death should not 
be passed aorainst him, that the Declaration of Independence 
gives to every man his right to life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness, as for Slavery, having slain our sons, to ask 
leave to step over our border and desolate our Territories, 
now free from its devastations and villainies. My creed on 
this question is simply this, all things should be subordinate 
to the Union. If Slavery stands in the way of the Union, let 
it share the fortunes or the fate of war. Mr. »Speaker, I am 
not unmindful oi the advice of Demosthenes to the Athenians 
when he told them there was one common bulwark which 
only the prudent employ, distrust of the enemy : " Of this 
be mindful — to this adhere, and no calamity can befall you." 
Sir, I distrust the efforts of those architects of ruin who steal 
the livery of Democracy to serve the devil in ! 1 distrust 
the editors of such papers as The JVew York World, The 
Herald, and The True American, whose editor shed an 
abundance of ink in behalf of the injuries inflicted upon the 
writ of Habeas Corpus, but object to the effusion of a drop 
of blood on behalf of an imperilled country. The editor of 
the last named paper, an influential leader of the party 
which now controls the destinies of the State, wrote, Nov, 
26th, 1861, that he had received from Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, a rosette of sky-blue silk, tastefully quilled with these 
words, " Three Cheers for 'Sqv^ Jersey." If these resolu- 
tions pass, the venerable wheel-horse, or war-horse of 
Democracy, as it is, had better write over his rosette, 
"Three Groans for New Jersey." Discarding all personal 
feeling, if I ever entertained any, and recognizing in many 
of them the social virtues which adorn society, I cannot but 
regard, with rare exceptions, the leaders of the dominant 
party in New Jersey as enemies of their Government and 
false to their country. Through the press and on the public 
hustings they proclaim or insinuate that there will be revo- 
lution at home if the Conscription act is executed in New 
Jersey. Sir, I have thought much and anxiously, and in 
silence — when the conscience tells us life should " soar to 



26 

nobler ends thnn power" — about the dangers which threaten 
our Republic; but at no time have 1 suffered myself to be 
alarmed. My faith is in the intelligence, the integrity, and 
the patriotism of the })cople ; and when the hour of danger 
shall arrive, they will come to the rescue. As for myself, I 
hope that the flag of my country, which floated over my 
cradle may float over my grave. If traitors at home mean 
treason, the sooner we know it the better; and I say, "let 
them come on,'' for if we cannot protect the honor of our 
State we are unflt to enjoy the blessing of liberty. But 
what do the peace men i)ropose to do with the resolutions 
offered to the House with the solemn protest made " unto 
the Federal Government?" The only response I have yet 
heard made to this inquiry was made by one of the speakers 
in these words: " There can be," he said, " no harm in their 
passage and there may lie a great deal of good." This, Sir, 
which seems to me to be an answer on the lucus a non 
lucendo principle, is the only light that has yet been given 
to this house. Sir, who has told us why we should ask 
peace ? True one liundrcd thousand as brave men as ever 
stood in the front of battle have fallen victims to gratify the 
rapacity of Jefibrson Davis. It is true we are burdened 
w^ith debt, but loyal men everywhere I)ear their burdens 
without repining, and their prayers go up day and night for 
the perpetuity of our Government. Not two years ago the 
Legislature, by a unanimous vote, passed among other 
things, the following resolution : 

^'■Resolved, That firmly believing " that the preservation 
of our National Union is the only security for the rights, 
liberties and power of our own people, and the great hope 
of oppressed humanity thi-oughout the world, we call upon 
the National Government to put forth at once every energy 
of which it is capable to preserve the National Union and 
enforce obedience to the laws of the land in every point of 
the Union, being inflexibly resolved that Bunker Hill and 
New York and New Orleans shall never be dissevered; and 
believing from the teaching of all history, that the most 
certain and speedy way of restoring peace is by the most 
vigorous prosecution of the war." 



27 

These I know were the sentiments of the great leader of ar 
once pr^ud party. Did these sentiments die with him ? As; 
if Providence still extends his shelter over this suflcring 
country, he still binds together New Orleans and New 
York, and united by railways and telegraph, we hnd the 
home of liberty and the grave of Washington. Man changes 
but principles are eternal. The principles enunciated in- 
that resolution will stand the test of talents and of time- 
Compare them with Protest No. 7, of the late peace resolu- 
tion " Against the power assumed in the proclamation of the 
President, made Jan. 1, 1863, by which all the slaves m 
certain States and parts of States are forever set free, and 
against the expenditure of the public moneys for the emanci- 
pation of slaves or their support at any time, under any 
pretence whatever." The record of the party in power is 
this: In 1861, in the month of May, they call upon the 
National Government to put forth every energy to enforce 
obedience to the laws and to put down rebellion. In August, 
1862, the same party, at Trenton, in the fourth resolution of 
their platform, enter their solemn protest " against the reck- 
less extravagance, infamous peculations, and political out- 
rages of the party in power," but in the next line '• advocates 
the use of every Constitutional means to the extent of the 
full power of the Government for the suppression of the 
Rebellion." O, graceful preachers of peace ! 0, immacu- 
late patriots ! what cliange has come over the spirit of your 
dreams? I have looked in vain from the first line to tlie 
last Resolution of tliese solemn protests " made unto the 
Federal Government," and find nothing urging the full 
power to crush the Rebellion. Sir, it seems to me as if in 
August the Peace party did not know how far the audacity 
of Secession, under the guise of State Rights, might go. But, 
the first step taken, the poet says, the descent into hell is 
easy! The French say, " It is the first step which costs:"' 
and who is astonished that the audacity which offered the 
Holsman resolutions has culminated in bending low upon its 
knee with the request that Abraham Lincoln will allow this: 



28 

party of peace to humiliate themselves before a perjured 
traitor, after seeking his presence in the citj of Richmond. 
Since James Buchanan was false to the liberties of the 
people. I know of nothino; so humiliating as the position in 
which the party in power seek to place New Jersey, by 
abandoning the pledges solemnly made and reiterated in 
every township and village of the State prior to the election 
of November last. Resolution 4th says that Democracy is 
actuated by no *' lurking animosity to the South." I do not 
apprehend that such a charge would be seriously made 
against the peace party. If they rec^uire it we fully exon- 
erate them from such accusation. For, does not the House 
remember that Brigadier General Runyon and four others 
were willing, under '• proper safeguards," to seek Jefferson 
Davis, not with " lurking animosity,"'' but on the contrary 
with open expression of their distinguished consideration. 
In my mind's eye 1 see them now. This mournful cortege 
has passed the Rappahannock ; the live Commissioners, sore 
and travel-stained, wait with appropriate humility before 
the city where dwells the Imperial Caesar of the Southern 
Confederacy. They are admitted to an audience, and ask 
that the aegis of the Afontgomery Constitution may be ex- 
tended over the North. JJut their cup of bitterness is not 
full. Twelve hours are granted in which they must leave 
the domain of the Satrap of Slavery, or suffer the penalty of 
being executed, like Faganini's music, on a single string! 
Again may the brave Brigadier be seen, with mournful cor- 
tege, beside the bank of the Rappahannock, bidding adieu 
to Southern institutions, solaced with the reflection that 

" It is better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all." 

The Senator from Morris, for whom I have always enter- 
tained a high respect, said that it would be better for the 
country if we had less of John Brown and more of Me- 
Clellan. Let me answer with a counter proposition. The 
^Stuarts used to sigh for an hour of Dundee, and 1 have 
heard our soldiers say, " Oh, for one year of Fhilip Kearney!" 



29 

And can we forget that passionate conscience of genius 
which felt his country's danger, and knew so well the duty 
of a soldier. Can we forget when Magruder hurled ten 
thousand Rebels against the Spartan phalanx of our Union 
soldiery ; when the enemy melted like snow before the morn- 
ing sun, and when the order was, not to advance into Rich- 
mond, but to retreat, that the hero of Chantilly said "This 
is cowardice, or treason," The Senator has also prepared 
an indictment against Abraham Lincoln. He seemed to 
think that the President had changed his policy in regard to 
emancipation, and defiantly called on any one to explain the 
argument the President had with the Chicago delegation, 
in which he said " the Proclamation would be the Pope's 
bull against the comet." Will the Senator from Morris re- 
member that the President is an Illinois lawyer ; that he 
argued the question on both sides, and concluded with the 
remark that, whatever seemed the leading of Divine Provi- 
dence, that course he would pursue, and acting as a states- 
man who knows the value of '' self-knowledge, self-reverence, 
and self-respect," when the final triumph of our cause seemed 
still distant, trusting to the '■ considerate judgment of man- 
kind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God," he issued 
that Proclamation which will liberate this continent from a 
remorseless despotism, and will yet place the President in 
the front rank of men who, recognizing the invisible princi- 
ples of eternal justice, stand between a nation and perdi- 
tion. The Senator from Morris appeared for the prosecu- 
tion but his argument speaks for the defence ; he had better 
enter a nolle prosequi on his indictment. But let us pause a 
moment to touch another picture. It is one, only one, among 
ten thousand : 

Trace back to Charlemagne the annals of chivalry, and 
you will find among the Christian Knights no record of 
endurance more heroic, of vigils more patiently kept than 
those which have marked the whole history of our sad and 
glorious struggle. I had a friend, a colonel of cavalry in a 



30 

•regiment from Ohio.* He possessed ancestral wealth, but 
was far richer in an openness of soul and a graciousness of 
manner which endeared him to all who approached. Culture 
liad done much for him. and to refinement of nature was 
added a temper full of sweetness and light. He was as 
brave as Coeur de Leon. 

He was urged to return, for a l>rief period, before the fight 
at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His answer, written on the eve 
of that great battle was — "It were better that I lie buried 
{or unburied) in these desolate fields rather than it should 
be said of me, ' He did not dare to do his duty.' " In the 
wild charge they made, just when the victory was won he 
fell in a hand to hand fight with five of the Rebel cavalry — 
resigned in death — and his latest words breathing solicitude 
for the future of his country and tenderness for those he was 
about to leave for ever. 

While our slaughtered brethren are unavenged; while the 
stain of dishonor, written over the flag which has trium- 
phantly waved over a thousand fields, written by the rattle- 
snake-braves of South Carolina, still clings to it, let that man 
be accursed who breathes of peace. But rather let us pledge 
again, as our fathers did, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred 
honors, that we will not turn to the right or to the left till the 
advancing flag of the victorious nation waves resistlessly over 
every hill top and valley wrested from us by this remorseless 
rebellion ! And if red-handed treason pleads for the Con- 
fititution, let her lay down her arms that are pointed at the 
breast of the Republic. As to compromise, it will not be so 
much as named among us. Patriotism is not a sentiment; 
it is a principle, and its foundation is virtue. Adversity tries 
nations as well as individuals, and if this nation is saved it 
will be "so as by fire." A word about the writ of habeas 
corpus, in States and Territories sustaining the Federal Gov- 
ernment where the public safety does not require it. Now, 
the Constitution, Art. 1, Sec. 9, No. 2, says : "The provisions 
of the act shall not be suspended, unless when in case of 

*Col. .J. Minor Milliken, of Hamilton, Ohio. 



31 

rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.'' I 
know that it has been held that the proclamation of martial 
law by a military officer is not sufficient; but I also know 
that it has been held, in an elaborate opinion of the Attorney- 
General of the United States, and by other Attorneys- 
General before him, " that the President of the United States, 
without an act of the Legislature, has power to suspend the 
writ of habeas corpus.^' I have confidence in the chief law 
officer of the Government, and 1 have faith in the integrity 
and the honesty of purpose which are distinguishing char- 
acteristics of Abraham Lincoln. It is well to remember that 
the liberties of Rome were crushed in the iron hand of Ccesar, 
and when Cataline and the worst citizens conspired against 
Rome, Cicero and the best saved the Imperial City. Civil 
liberty, as opposed to natural liberty, is the not being re- 
strained by any law except those which, in a greater degree, 
conduce to the welfare of mankind. It is the liberty of a 
man in a state of society, or natural liberty so far only 
abridged and restrained as is necessary and expedient for 
the safety and interest of the society, State, or Nation. Ac- 
cording to a distinguished statesman of England, government 
without liberty degenerates into tyranny, and liberty with- 
out good government becomes license. Good government 
and legal liberty depend the one upon the other. Kow, if 
society has no power to protect itself from treason, and 
against traitors, then civil society is at an end. Justice, 
which resides between the "endless jar" of right and wrong, 
loses its name. There is, Sir, no danger that this nation will 
die of tyranny, unless it be the tyranny of Jefferson Davis. 
The American idea is to make politics moral by unity with 
natural justice, a foundation on which a nation can rest as 
long as the everlasting hills endure. What the nation suffers 
from is the excess of lil)erty. When the Commons of Eng- 
land could say to their King, " You are our servant," then 
the Temple of Liberty was completed. Abraham Lincoln is 
to-day the servant of the people, and cannot fire a gun, or 
hang a traitor, without a Congress, which comes from the 



s 



people. If the President, as Commander-in-Chief of our 
armies and navies, desire to "ensure domestic tranquility,"' 
how is he to do it ? One hundred thousand men advance 
from Richmond, and are thundering at the gates of the 
capital. -Traitors and spies invest every city of the North, 
and the intelligence meant for our armies reaches Eich- 
mond before the General-in-Chief has any news. You say 
the judges are pure and the Courts are open — so they may 
be — the prisoner enters bail, and a partisan jury, as in Indi- 
ana, disagree or acquit. Do you tell me, then, that the war 
powers of the President extend no further than in times of 
peace? Those who so hold, are apt to regard the life or 
liberty of a traitor as of more value than the safety of the 
hation. I was elected to this House upon the clearly-enun- 
ciated proposition that the arrest of men suspected of treason, 
men deemed to be public enemies, was a just exercise of the 
war powers of the President, and I do not propose now to 
recede from that ground, which I believe returning reason 
will say is safe and sufficiently coiiservative. Unwise arrests 
have been made, and, in some instances, injuries may have 
been inflicted, but I believe that such instances are the ex- 
ceptions. The "safety of the Republic is the supreme law." 
I am willing to leave the whole question of "arbitrary 
arrests" to the President, believing that he means, and has 
meant, in every act of his official life, to make "power gentle 
and obedience liberal." Sir ! in the luminous future I track 
the giant march of freedom; well I know, when once begun, 
that onward march knows no retreat. The heroic spirit of 
the slumbering dead lives again in far off Missouri, and 1 
see the shackels of the slave shivered from his limbs, while 
from State to State — through storm and tempest — through 
blood and tears— the spirit of Liberty holds its resistless 
way, striking the corrupt politician and the slaveholding 
tyrant together to the dust ; evoking from the ruins of stately 
cities — from the untold horrors of the battle-field — sacred 
religion and immortal Liberty, and proclaiming in tones that 
pierce the ears of a waiting world, that the majesty of the 



law must bo vindicated. I know that some wait for the 
nation and its President to retrace their advancing steps. 
Let them not be deceived ! Vestigia nulla retrorsum is the 
motto of advancing civilization. If I read history aright, 
when Constantinople fell the last of the Csesars folded around 
him the imperial mantle and remembered the names which 
he represented in the dignity of heroic death. Better that 
the Presidenl of a free people, like the last of the Caesars, 
dignify the last hours of a noble Republic by his courage and 
magnanimity than to take one step backward. Waterloo, 
says Victor Hugo, was a change of front of the universe — 
but when the last best hope of freedom goes out, there will 
be a sadder and more fearful change of front for the universe. 
But, Sir, so strong is my fiiith in the people, whose hearts 
throb for the Union, that 1 cannot believe it will be said of 
America as was once said of Switzerland, " She has nothing 
left but her rocks, her ruins, and her demagogues." The 
nation will live. The patriot fires of the Revolution are 
kindling from Maine to California. Let us be equal to our 
destiny, and leave the issue, after our duty is done, to the 
God of Battles. I have spoken the sentiments of my heart, 
and, as I believe, the sentiments of a loyal and fearless con- 
stituency. If the melancholy trial be forced upon us, which 
will decide whether the Spirit of Faction is paramount to 
Nationality and stronger than the Spirit of Liberty, I hope, 
for one, that I shall be equal to the test. But if the black 
banner of despotism floats over the Capitol of New Jersey, 
I shall not despair. If our generation is not equal to the 
high destiny God offers this nation — if we lay down our 
arms, as these resolutions ignominiously ask, then Freedom's 
battle will be bequeathed from sire to son; another and a 
nobler generation will take up the banner of Constitutional 
and Republican Liberty where we have laid it down, and by 
victorious peace build a Republic forever on the imperisliable 
principles of Justice. 



NEW JERSEY FOR THE UNION, 



DELIVERED IN THE NEW JERSEY SENATE, MARCH 16, 18G4. 



Upon the Bill jjrohibitifig the eiilistment of Colored Troops 

in the State, under penalty of $500 fine, or l^iprisonment 

for five years. 

Mr. President : A year ago I stood in the lower House 
of this Legislature, in opposition to the peace resolutions 
offered and advocated by a majority of the Senators upon 
this floor. These resolutions sought to purchase peace at 
the price of our national honor. These resolutions, about 
which the dominant party in the Senate have observed a 
silence at once ominous and remarkable, united the morality 
of Louis Napoleon with the language of Machiavelli. They 
trifled with the conscience of the State as the rebellion has 
sought to trifle with the conscience of the nation ; for when 
Chief Justice Taney announced from the highest court in 
the land that the everlasting curse of human bondage was 
the supreme law, before which absolute justice must bend 
and break, then the great popular heart stirred to its depth, 
and conscience, with so delicate a voice that it is often 
stifled, spoke in so clear a tone that its accents could neither 
be mistaken nor its mandates disobeyed. 

Some of us came up slowly to the help of the Lord against 
the mighty. Mental servitude had become an attribute of 



the North as much as bodily scryitudc was the institution of 
tlie South, till, with as much wit as truth, a son of New 
England said, replying to Daniel Webster, " Yes, there is 
no North; it is tlie South all the way up to Cayiada!'' 

Soon it. peraieated the minds of the people that when a 
Chief Justice said, in the latitude of Washington city, " that 
a negro had no rights which a white man was bound to 
respect,'' the true intent and meaning of such language in 
the atmosphere of Charleston was, that "no Northern 
mudsill has any right which a Southern gentleman is bound 
to respect." Then the shotted guns of Sumter opened, 
while manhood and moral courage took the place in the 
mind and heart of the American people, of concession and 
pusillanimity. 

We have refused allegiance to our principles ; we have 
refused to pay the price of national honor and virtue ; and 
we are sued in the courts of destiny, and the case is this day 
on trial. And I need not speak of the eagerness with which 
the eyes of Europe are turned towards America — that land 
which a distinguished Englishman says " privilege every 
morning, with blatant breath, begins to curse because it 
dares to be prosperous and happy without a monarchy, 
without an aristocracy, and without a priesthood, who arc 
the licensed venders of salvation wrought by love.*' 

Mr. Speaker, I confess the hesitation with whicli I ap- 
proach the discussion of this bill, which is now before the 
Senate. My only desire is to proclaim those sentiments of 
future policy which I believe are intimately connected with 
the future glory of our country. And, Sir, I trust that J 
belong to that class who believe tlie greatest glory of a free 
man is to be a good citizen. And a good citizen prefers 
liberty to luxury, and honor to profit. He holds that, next 
to dying for one's country, the greatest glory is to live for 
her interest and her honor. I have no aspirations, no am- 
bitions, which do not go forward in longing for that peace 
which shall daw^n upon the end of this terrible and rightcoup- 



37 

■war, a peace wliicli, in the language of Abraham Lincoln, 
*' I hope may come soon, and when it does come will come 
to stay, and will be worth the keeping." 

Whenever I look upon that flag, Sir, with every impulse 
of my heart there rises a sentiment of affection and of honor. 
1 know that God has given the country to men who can 
defend it, and to women who, in its service, consent to the 
sacrifice of their husbands, their brothers and their sons. 
And the man, whoever he is, and whatever place he may fill, 
who will not protect and defend tlie land that gave him 
birth, is a dastard and a coward. 

The bill before the Senate. Mr. President, is entitled '* An 
act to regulate the appropriation of moneys raised by the 
authority of this State, for war purposes." I frankly con- 
fess that I differ from my honorable friend, the Senator from 
Union (Mr. Jenkins), in the views he entertains for the 
causes and conduct of the war. General sagacity and up- 
rightness cannot contend against the prejudices among 
which a man is born, which are the breath of his nostrils to 
him. As God has no attribute which sides with the op- 
pressor, so man ennobles himself by becoming the advocate 
■of the oppressed. Bishop Hopkins may thunder in a small 
way to a very select audience that slavery is a divine insti- 
tution, and compel his auditors to bow down to the narrow- 
est interpretation of individual texts. But the heart relying 
on the spirit of Scripture still whispers what every grand 
thinker the world has ever produced boldly proclaims — that 
all men everywhere ought to he free. 

You cannot make science utter a lie in the face of the 
universe, and declare that the sun moves round the earth 
and the earth stands still. The terrors of the Inquisition 
are nothing, and Galileo whispers " E pur si muove." It 
does move, though. 

Aye ! And New Jersey moves. Only a year ago we 
were threatened with revolution in the North if a single 
soldier who wag not a white citizen should enlist and fi2:ht 



38 

against "slavery in arms.'' And now a single township in 
the county of Warren has paid ten thousand dollars for 
bounties to colored soldiers ; and not less than three thou- 
sand black soldiers have left New Jersey to revenge their 
slaughtered brothers at Wagner, Port Hudson and at Vicks- 
burg. Aye ! Even New Jersey moves. 

Never again will an insolent majority on bended knees 
supplicate for peace, and herald to all the world that this 
war for law, for liberty and for humanity is " causeless in 
its origin, and dangerous to the liberties of the people."* 
Never again will men oflFer upon the floor of this Senate to 
join any of the sister States of the Union to carry into 
practical effect a war upon the Federal Government. 

So wide spread and so thorough was the delusion in this 
regard in the remnant of the Democratic party, that they 
unconsciously became the apologists and defenders of human 
bondage and its villainies. 

We find the present Executive of this State declaring in 
his inaugural address, (page 14, 1863): We are told that the 
belief that slavery is the cause of the war, and that the war 
can never cease and the life of the nation be preserved until 
slavery be abolished, has led to a departure from the- 
original purpose of the war. This is the radical error of the 
Emancipationists. Slavery is no more the cause of the war 
than gold is the cause of robbery and murder. 

Compare this with the avowal of Alexander H. Stephens, 
the associate of Jefierson Davis, in a speech delivered in 
Savanuah, on the 21st of March, 1861. He says: "The 
new Constitution has put to rest forever all the agitating 
questions relating to our peculiar institutions. African 
slavery, as it exists among us, is the proper status of the 
negro in our form of civilization. Tms was the immediate 

CAUSE OF THE LATE RUPTURE AND THE PRESENT REVOLUTION." 

Between such eminent advocates of slavery as the Governor 
of New Jersey and the Vice President of a moribund Con- 
federacy, who shall decide ? 

*Peace Resolution No. 3. 



39 

Outside of this State, and excepting the city of New York, 
1 do not know where it is seriously contended that *' abo- 
litionism and secessionism " were the cause of the war. Yet 
such was the opinion deliberately expressed by Joel Parker 
in his inaugural address in 1863, and boldly avowed in his 
annual message of January 12th, 1864. He thinks, too, 
that if the policy of emancipation had not been inaugurated, 
the mass of the people in some of the Southern States would 
have " supplanted their rulers and returned to their alle- 
giance." A greater fallacy was never uttered. Let Mary- 
land and Missouri and Arkansas answer, where you cannot 
iind any fugitive slaves, but where fugitive masters abound. 
There, where wisdom has been born of this terrible contest, 
they hold that slavery, like Achan's wedge of gold, is an 
accursed thing, and they gladly tear down the rebel banner 
and run up " our beautiful flag." 

But in Kentucky, where neutrality prevailed — and neu- 
trality in a struggle between freedom and barbarism is a 
monstrosity — where neutrality prevailed, we now find Gov- 
ernor Bramlette threatening to resist the enlistment of 
negroes as soldiers. Kentucky answers New Jersey while 
South Carolina applauds ! 

And I venture the assertion that outside the rebel lines 
there is no Legislature that dares to defy the Federal Gov- 
ernment by passing so iniquitous a measure as the one under 
consideration, unless it be the Legislature of the State of 
New Jersey. No man whose heart is with his country can 
read the bill without condemning it. It provides, " That 
from and after the passage of the act it shall not be lawful 
for any part of the moneys now raised, or which may be 
hereafter raised for war purposes, to be used for the employ- 
ment of negroes as soldiers; and any one offending against 
the provisions of this act shall, for each and every offence, 
upon conviction, be subject to a fine of not less than five 
hundred dollars, and imprisonment for a term of not less 
than five years.'' 



40 

And I would be glad to know whether this bill meets the 
approval of the Governor of New Jersey. When such a 
measure was proposed for the county of Union, I said that 
the policy of negro enlistment under the laws of the United 
States had met the sanction of the Executive of this State. 
1 was glad to credit him with sustaining- the Government 
after his own fashion. I appreciate the social virtuea of 
Joel Parker, but I am not bound to admire that easy political 
virtue which writes a sympathizing letter to a Yallandigham 
meeting, declares against the suspension of the writ of habeas 
corpus, and says in the face of a popular majority of nearly 
two hundred thousand, that the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
tion is a mistake, intimates that it is unconstitutional, and 
ends l)y declaring it an ''obstacle in the way of peace." Sir! 
We have had too much of this style of supporting the Gov- 
ernment. 

New Jei-sey, to-day, is full of Union men with Confederate 
principles. Like the Cavaliers in the days of the Pretender, 
they hold their wine glasses over their water glasses, and 
drink " to the King " — over the water. They say, (these half- 
hearted Union men), 

" God ble?9 tlie Ejug, God blees the faith's defender, 
The Devil take the Pope and the Pretender; 
But who the Pretender is, and who King, — 
God bless us all, — is quite another thing." 

I charge now, as I have charged before, that the Governor 
of New Jersey was elected in the interest of slavery, and 
that Democracy, as oSicered and manned in New Jersey, is 
in sympathy with treason and rebellion. 

If you decorate your Senate Chamber with an American 
flag, a State flag must be elevated beside it. The doctrine 
of State rights, a political falsehood, and a delusion, is boldly 
proclaimed as part of the new gospel of peace. Three 
weeks since, the Senator from Bergen (Mr. flolsman) declared 
himself in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the war, and I 
congratulated the Senate that since he was in fiivor, now, of 
a war with white men, in the next year he would be 



41 

eloquently for carrying the war into Afi-ica, icith Africans.* 
But, Sir, the Peace Committee met at the New York Hotel, 
on the 22d day of February, desecrating tlie anniversary 
day that gave birth to George Washington, and since then 
the Senator from Bergen, in almost the identical language of 
the pronunciamento of the Rebel Congress, declares that he 
is now, and has been since the firing upon Fort Sumter, 
against the war. My accusation against " Democracy as it 
is," hath this extent. It is without honest purpose or prin- 
ciple. If it pretends to be for the war in Pennsylvania, it 
is for peace in New Jersey. And when General Lee was 
marching through the beautiful and fertile valley of the 
Cumberland up to Harrisburg, the Democratic party was 
joyously assembling in the State Capital of Pennsylvania, to 
nominate George H. Woodward, who said "it was a sin to 
think against slavery," and that the time must come wheo 
the South could fall back upon her natural rights, and use 
all the means she possesses, or could command, in defence of 
her soil. No wonder that General Lee hastened to ratify a 
nomination so opportunely made ! No wonder a single voice 
was not raised in that convention which found the latitude 
of Harrisburg suggestive of shot and shell. And it is not 
singular that a retired Major General, in the U. S. Army, 
who would make a " capital engineer for a stationary power," 
wrote his distinguished considerations on the eve of a most 
significant election, to Mr. Woodward, who believed that 
"slavery was a blessing !" 

And, while this subject is in my memory, let me say that 
the saddest sight that my eyes ever beheld was the sight of 
the weary thousands who tlironged the bridge across the 



'In appreciation of Mr. Scovel's consistent elTorts on behalf of the 
colored race, he was presentad with a cosily and beautiful silk American 
flag, inscribed on the one side — 

" We repose faith in God : To our country we are irue : TVe make no 
distinction of Races." 

On the reverse — 

"Presented to the Hon. James M. Scovel by the African American 
citizens of Camden couatr, N. J., Dec. 201,h, 18ti(i." — II. H. D. 



42 

Susquehanna, on the 19th day of June, in the year of grace 
1863 ; old men, tender women, and helpless children, for the 
first time in their lives aliens to their hearths and home- 
steads, they had gathered together their household gods, and 
sought shelter from the Goths and Vandals of barbarism — 
sought shelter and protection on the peaceful banks of the 
Juniata. The recollections of these scenes can never be 
effaced, and till they have passed from my mind, let no more 
ask me to pause in my efforts to point to my countrymen the 
perils which threaten the republic. One of the finest passages 
in Roman history tells us that after the battle of Cannae, 
when disaster and defeat had followed the Roman general, 
the Senate went beyond the wails of the imperial city to 
thank their general that he had not despaired of the republic. 
To that man who would stop the victorious banners of the 
armies of the Union, by cavilling at the proclamation of 
emancipation, I would answer that it was six months after 
the head of the nation had invoked the "considerate judg- 
ment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God," 
on that proclamation, before — standing by the unnumbered 
graves of our dead in the nation's cemetery — we could say, 
"of the two great efforts to enslave the English race in body 
and mind, the first met its grave at Marston Moor, the second 
at Gettysburg." 

But to return to the political decline and fall of New Jer- 
sey. In 1849 both Houses of this Legislature, by joint reso- 
lution, declared slavery to be an evil, and instructed our 
Senators and Representatives in Congress to vote against the 
extension of human bondage in the Territories. {Pamph. 
Laws, p. 334, 1 849.) But soon the leading politicians who 
represented the dominant power became — by social ties, or 
by the powerful influence of interest — wedded to the cause 
of slavery. New Jersey became pro-slavery in sentiment, 
or at least, the dominant party were for slavery rather than 
for the Union. 

It sent Senators to Con<2:ress who defended the institution. 



43 

It sent members to the lower House who worshipped at the 
shrine of Jefferson Davis — then, as now, the leading spirit 
of Southern aggression. 

A monster monopoly, which subsidized newspapers, and 
treated the consciences of legislators as a merchantable 
article — a corrupt corporation, which may yet learn that 
"corruption wins not more than honesty" — aided and abetted 
this spirit of pro-slavery fanaticism. A man who was for 
liberty, and against the despotism of men who called them- 
selves the "master race," was ostracised in private and in 
public life. 

It was during the time when James Buchanan made Le- 
compton a test. He and his viceroys made power tyranny, 
and they made tyranny contemptible. I then felt as I now 
feel — that obedience to such behests was a crime. 

I declared in 1858 that if the creed of Buchanan on the 
Kansas question became the policy of New Jersey, and in 
the country, the Democratic party would become a political 
and moral abomination. 

The money power and the slave power triumphed, and 
controlled the Democracy in the district in which I resided. 
The Kansas candidate, who believed in Buchanan, was nomi- 
nated and defeated. 

I said, in the Philadelphia Press of October lOtli, 1858: 
" The man -who is chosen to bear the Democratic standard 
this fall must bend to the auti-Lecompton sentiment; the 
principle will not bend to him, and no shifting or truckling 
on that question will satisfy the people or subdue the voters 
of the First District, and woe be to the candidate for Con- 
gressional honors who has already pledged himself against 
the double-dealing of a treacherous Administration and has 
then turned back." 

From that day to this I have been in undying hostility ta 
that sort of Democracy which hates liberty, loves slavery, 
and would rather celebrate the funeral rites of constitutional 
liberty amid the incantations and orgies of Secession and 



44 

Rebellion, than see the triumphant advance of civilization 
which strikes the shackles from the slave and tells the op- 
pressed to go free. 

Since 1860, the history of New Jersey has been written 
so that all the world has read it. I yield, Sir, to no Senator 
on this floor in regard for the honor of New Jersey — dearer 
to me than life itself. For her I have labored, for her I have 
•made sacrifices which it docs not become me here to narrate, 
and for her future destiny I shall do battle with my latest 
breath, hoping — aye, and praying — that she may yet be free. 
But, Sir, and I say it with shame, the political history of this 
State for three years is one of which no patriot can be proud, 
save as its darker lines are made glorious and lustrous by 
the deathless courage of New Jersey soldiers, who have 
made crimson on every battle field from Roanoke to Gettys- 
burg, with their biood, the banner of victory. 

Mr. President, I am charged with being political, rather 
than argumentative. But, Sir, this is a political question ; 
it is a capital cause we are trying. The nation is on trial 
for its life. 'J'he Democratic party has already been tried 
and condemned. Has it anything to say why sentence of 
death should not l)e pronounced against it? I pause for a 
reply. Who are its advocates ? Is it the sage of Monticello, 
Thomas Jefferson — a Virginian when Virginia was the 
mother of Presidents, and not the grave of Northern patriots? 
No. Who is it, then, who cometh with dyed garments to 
defend "Democracy as it is?" Ah! Now I behold the 
melancholy procession ! At its head I do not find the sage 
of Monticello, or the "War Horse of the Hermitage," but I 
behold Chauncey Burr, the Senator from Bergen (Mr. Hols- 
man), and David Naar ! 

And now, Sir, a few words upon this measure, which I 
understand has the sanction of the Democratic caucus, and I 
have done. I oppose the bill because — 

First. It contravenes the laws of Congress. 

Second. Because it is against public policy and against the 
righta of mankind. 



45 

The laws of Congress passed in and since the year 1862, 
authorize the President to enroll, arm, equip, and to receive 
into the land and naval service of the United States such 
number of volunteers of African descent as he may deem 
useful to suppress the present rebellion, for such term as he 
may prescribe. 

Under and by virtue of these several acts of Congress, as 
I am informed by the chairman of the Military Committee 
of the United States, 80,000 colored men, many of whom 
were once slaves and are now freedmen, are enlisted in the 
armies of the Union. At least 30,000 more of these despised 
Africans, about whom the majority of the Senate talk so 
much and care so little, are employed by the Government, 
though they do not wear a soldier's uniform. These black 
men carry a flag which is the symbol of nationality, of power, 
and of liberty, and they have never disgraced it. It is, then, 
the settled policy of the United States Government to em- 
ploy black soldiers. The experiment has been made under 
the laws of Congress. It has succeeded. 

And now I suppose the Legislature of New Jersey sends 
greeting to the War Department, with instructions to de- 
sist from enlisting, under a penalty (for citizens of this State) 
of "a tine not less than $500, or imprisonment for a term of 
not less than five years.'^ I am pleased to be able to state 
that Democracy with Edwin M. Stanton does not mean 
"strategy and peace," but means " fidelity to one's country." 
The prospect, therefore, of impressing the peculiar views of 
a majority of this House in that quarter is quite slender. 

The object of this bill is either to deceive the people or to 
embarrass the Government. If to deceive the people, it is 
not a new game which is now played for the first time ; if 
to embarrass the Government, it is only a new foe with an 
old face, for the election of Horatio Seymour on a war plat- 
form was soon made the occasion for organizing an armed 
mob, who declared for peace in the city of New York with 
torch and sword ! 



46 

Let there be sincerity between us. TLe South began this 
war in the interest of slavery. We began the war for the 
Union ; we carry it on for the IJnion ; and we will end it 
by subduing the rebellion, and by subjugating the " fugitive 
masters " in the South. The war for us is necessarily and 
justly in the interest of Freedom, for Slavery is the lion in 
the way. God binds up the nation's wounds with emancipa- 
tion. The Constitution was meant to "-secure liberty, ^^ not 
to protect slavery. 

No principle of law is plainer than the one which denies 
to a State the power to pass laws in conflict with the laws of 
the United States ; and this bill practically raises the banner 
of resistance, because it resists the law of the Federal Gov- 
ernment ; and 1 am glad that the Senator from Union (Mr. 
Jenkins) abjures the political heresy of State Rights. Per- 
haps we can meet on friendly grounds, as I learn he was 
once a Whig, when I quote the language of Henry Clay : 
"If Kentucky unfurl to-morrow tlie banner of resistance, 
/ will not fight under that flag. I owe allegiance to my na- 
tive State, but 1 owe a paramount allegiance to the United 
States Government." 

If it were required, Sir, I could produce volumes of testi- 
mony to the bravery and efficiency of our colored soldiers. 
General Hunter, in speaking of the First Regiment of South 
Carolina Volunteers, said: "I am glad to be in Ihe midst of 
you — glad to have seen so fine an exhibition of proficiency 
as you have shown this day. I only wish I had a hundred 
thousand of you to fight for the freedom of the Union." 

Commodore Dupont wrote from Port Royal his gratitude 
to the contrabands who had rallied around him, and his 
declaration is : " They serve us with zeal, make no bargains 
for their remuneration, go under fire without the slightest 
hesitation, and, indeed, in our cause are as 'insensible to 
fear' as Governor Pickens. Some of them are very intelli- 
gent." 

At Wagner, when the gallant Shaw, of the Fifty-fourth 



47 

Massachusetts, fell with his feet to the foe and his back to 
the field, a black sergeant, wounded and bleeding, dragged 
himself forward when the color-bearer fell, and, wrapping 
the flag about his body, crawled back, amid a deadly rain of 
artillery; and when he whispered to the white soldiers in 
the hospital, "I saved the flag," three cheers went up for the 
black sergeant of the Fifty-fourth, 

Let me assure the other side of the chamber that the reign 
of force is ended, and even chivalry begins to understand 
that ideas rule the world; civilization wrestles with preju- 
dice as the angel of old wrestled with the patriarch, and 
prejudice will be smitten to the death. 

I oppose this bill because it is against the rights of man- 
kind. The nation has outgrown the Dred Scott decision, 
and the conscience of the nation is at last satisfied that God's 
lesson for America is that absolute justice to the African is 
mental and moral emancipation to the white man. 

I beg leave to refer to George Bancroft's views upon the 
efibrt to betray the rights of man at the command of passion 
and prejudice. He says: "That ill-starred disquisition is 
the starting point of this rebellion, which, for a quarter of a 
century, has been vainly preparing to raise its head. ' When 
courts of justice fail, war begins.' The so-called opinion of 
Taney, who J trust did not intend to hang out the flag of 
disunion — that rash offence to the conscious memory of the 
millions — upheaved our country with the excitement which 
swept over those of us who vainly hoped to preserve a strong 
and sufficient, though narrow, isthmus that might stand be- 
tween the conflicting floods. No nation can adopt that judg- 
ment as its rule and live ; the judgment has in it no element 
of political vitality. I will not say it is an invocation of the 
dead past ; there never was a past that accepted such opin- 
ions. If we want the opinions received in the days when 
the Constitution was framed, we will not take them second- 
hand from our Chief Justice. We will let the men of that 
day speak themselves. How will our American magistrate 



48 

sink when arraigned, as he will be, before the tribunal of 
humanity I How terrible will be the verdict against him 
when he is put in comparison with Washington's political 
teacher, the great Montesquieu, the enlightened magistrate 
of France, in what are esteemed the worst days of her mon- 
archy ! 

" The argument from the difference of race which Taney 
thrusts forward with passionate confidence as a proof of com- 
plete disqualification, is brought forward by Montesquieu as 
a scathing satire on all the l)rood of despots who were sup- 
posed to uphold slavery as tolerable in itself The lights 
OP MANKIND — that precious word which had no equivalent 
in the language of Hindostan, or Judea, or Greece, or Rome, 
or any anti-Christian tangue — found their supporter in Wash- 
ington and Hamilton — in Franklin and Livingston, in Otip, 
George Mason and Gadsden — in all the greatest men of our 
early history. 

" The one rule from which the makers of our first Con- 
federacy, and then of our National Constitution, never 
swerved, is this : To fix no constitutional disability in any 
one. Whatever might stand in the way of any man from 
opinion, ancestry, weakness of mind, inferiority, or incon- 
venience of any kind, was itself not formed into a perfect 
disfranchisement. 

" The Constitution of the United t^tates was made under 
the recognized influence of the eternal rule of order 'and 
right,' so that, as far as its jurisdiction extends, it raised at 
once the numerous class who had been chattels into the con- 
dition of persons. It neither originates nor perpetuates 
inequality." 

If the Constitution does not perpetuate inequality shall 
we ? 

Thomas Jefferson said: " The opinion that they (the colored 
race) are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, 
must be hazarded with great diffidence." (Jefferson's Works, 
Vol. Fill, p. 3S6.) He said afterward: "I expressed these 
views, therefore, with great hesitation ; but, whatever be their 



49 

degree of talent, it is no measure of their right. Because Sir 
Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding-, he 
was not, therefore, lord of the person and property of others." 

We are now paying the price of our national vices, as well 
as virtues. If this nation had been without virtues, we 
would possibly have been at peace, but it would have been 
the peace which follows dissolution and death. 

The monument at Bunker Hill stands for Prescott and 
Putnam and Warren, and it also stands for Salem, the colored 
man who shot the gallant Pitcairn as he mounted the parapet. 

Red Bank in the Revolution, and Bladensburg and New 
Orleans, at a later day, attest the valor of the colored soldier. 

Our unfriendly legislation will not stay the eternal laws 
of order and right. Let us rather hasten the advance of 
that day when we may "realize truth without suffering, and 
follow the triumphant road of justice without watering it 
with tears." The revolution through which we are passing 
is a necessary one, and if we are true to ourselves it will be 
one fortunate for all the world. Let us endeavor to elevate 
a race which for centuries has been despised, and in doing 
this we elevate ourselves. 

The struggle will soon be over. The right never fails in 
the eternal years of God. And this country will become 
what Garibaldi and Cavour dreamed that Italy might be. 
Privilege will no longer stalk in our streets, while justice 
speaks with •• bated breath and whispering humblances^" 
and as we look over this continent, we will say of our native 
land in the next four years that, •■ L'nder such an Adminis- 
tration as that of Abraham Lincoln this country will become 
what it ought to be, and what I believe its Divine Author 
intended it to be — not a vast plantation for the breeding of 
human beings for the purposes of lust and bondage, but a 
new valley of Jehosophat, in which the nations of the earth, 
acknowledging and worshipping a common God, will 
assemble and celebrate the resurrection of human freedom.'' 



NEW JERSEY FOR ENFRANCHISEMENT. 



DELIVERED IN THE NEW JERSEY SENATE. PEBRUARY 2T, 18GG. 



Mr. President: He must be a buoyant philosopher as 
well as the most charming of optimists who will deny, since 
the 22d day of February, that there is vitality in the spirit 
of slavery. 

It belongs to brave and creative intellects to forget the 
past, and 1 did not, Mr. President, take my place upon the 
floor of the Senate to-day to indulge in any historical detail 
of the sad but glorious recollections of the past four years 
through which the American Republic has struggled, suf- 
fered and triumphed. 

But, sir, events which have so recently shaken political 
opinion to its centre teach me to 

"Be wary and mistrustful ; 
The sinews of the soul are these." 

And without effort 1 recall the session of that defiant 
Convention which nominated a candidate for President 
because he had never won a battle, and then, with unblush- 
ing and unbridled audacity asked the world to believe that 
a just war was a failure, and that a cessation of " hostilities" 
was demanded by justice, and liberty, and humanity ! 

But the God of our Fathers, and not the wisdom of man, 
rescued the Republic. 

Sherman, within a month after the Chicago surrender, 
with the glittering bayonets of his hundred thousand, 
stamped Mr. Vallandigham's utterances as a political false- 
hood. 



51 

The Empire of Liberty moved forward. As we fondly 
imagined, the reign of peace had come. That kindest and 
most loving of men — he who was most deeply versed in 
the unwritten laws of humanity, the trusted and most well 
beloved leader of the nation's cause, walked hand in hand 
with his little child, unguarded, through the streets of Rich- 
mond. 

Not one year ago, upon that wild and awful night in 
April, Booth's bullet stilled the pulse of that mighty heart. 
The grass has not yet grown green over the grave where 
we laid him. 

Where was the great criminal ? 

Mr. President, he lives to-day, not the leading spirit of a 
lying civilization, comfortable in a casemate of Fortress 
Monroe and rejoicingly celebrating the 22d day of Feb- 
ruary, in the year of Grace 1866 — not Alexander H. 
Stephens, who saw "a ray of light" through the Chicago 
platform and now sees another as he complacently refers to 
President Johnson as his " great standard bearer," and 
generously hopes that the present policy of restoration may 
" receive the cordial support of every well-wisher of his 
country." 

Elected to the Senate of the United States by an unre- 
generate rebel constituency who scorned a constitution 
under whose shelter they basely endeavor again to creep, 
Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, even promises that the black man 
may start equal before the law in the possession and enjoy- 
ment of all rights o^ personal liberty and property. 

Small thanks for strong deservings ! The Constitutional 
Amendment gives to the dark-skinned citizens of the Re- 
public a right to l)e free, therefore in tliis you yield him 
nothing, sir. 

The free black in all the States has heretofore enjoyed 
the right to hold property, and in Maryland he (the colored 
man) voted with the whites for the Constitution of the 
United States. 



Then if we are just to the Vice President of a dead Con- 
federacv, you yield to the black man who carried a bayonet 
or who merged his rights in the will of his master whea 
slavery existed in name nothing but the bare right to live 
and to hold property — if he can get it. 

No! Mr. Stephens, you still persist in your denial of the 
rights of nian ; and in these days there are more simple 
infidels to man than infidels to God. 

No state Government has ever been recognized which 
ostracised a majority or any great mass of the people. The 
right of the State to ostracise the great mass of free negroes 
has never been recognized. 

If this precedent be set now it is for the first time. 

When negroes become free they become a part of the 
nation, and to ostracise them is to sanction a principle fatal 
to American government. 

There have been for the bondman two hundred and 
fifty years of unrequited toil ; for forty years the African has 
been the subject of conflict in politics, in the pulpit, and in 
the halls of Congress. 

Wise men and Statesmen insisted that servitude was hi& 
proper status ; Congress declared by solemn resolutions that 
he should no longer be talked about. But he was talked 
about. He grew into colossal proportions. The black man 
fronted the stars. God raised up (or permitting the use of 
the Devil's instruments for his own excellent purposes) such 
abolitionists as John C. Breckinridge and Jefferson Davis. 

By their avarice and their ambition, seeking to limit the 
ends of Government to the protection of property, and to 
blend the lofty commerce of spirit with spirit into the base 
bargaining of political selfishness, they at last succeeded, 
against their will, in breaking the bonds of the slave, while 
they strive to burst asunder the bonds of the Union, and to- 
day, thank God, the negro stands before the world a fixed 
figure on the canvas of history. No longer three-fifths of a 
man, but a whole man under an amended Constitution. lie 



53 

has rights which a white man is bound to respect — these 
rights will be secured to him by the fidelity of such men as 
Ulysses Grant and Horace Greeley, and if the political 
Moses at the White House is not yet out of the Bulrushes, 
there are 20,000,000 freemen in the North vrho have twice 
dared at the ballot box, in 1860 and four years later, to 
declare that some Moses must l)e found to lead the lonjr- 
waiting African through any Red Sea over to tlie promised 
land where he shall find, after 90 years of bondage, the 
stone of ignorance and prejudice has rolled away from the 
sepulchre and that he walks a freeman whom the truth 
makes free, in the light of a morning which breaks upon 
the new resurrection of human freedom. 

But I have asked where is the great criminal who menaces 
the life of the Nation ? 

He lives yet as he has lived during the Rebellion, cor- 
rupting the heart and animating the minds of the men of 
whom Mr. Shellaberger says : 

"They planned one universal bonfire of the North from 
Lake Ontario to the Missouri, They murdered by systems 
of starvation and exposure sixty thousand of your sons, as 
brave and heroic as ever martyrs were. They destroyed in 
the five years of horrid war another army so large that it 
would reach almost around the glolie in marching columns ; 
and then to give to the infernal drama a fitting close, and to 
concentrate into one crime all that is criminal in crime, and 
all that is detestable in barbarism, they killed the President 
of the United States." 

But the great criminal died not with the rebellion. 

We think we exorcised the evil spirit in New Jersey last 
November; but that he is utterly dead, I beg leave to 
doubt. 

1. He lives among the nutmeg men of Connecticut, who 
refuse the negro the right to vote, and yet impose upon him 
the double duties of fighting for the Union and paying taxes 
incurred in breaking down a slave-holders' rebellion. 

2. He lives in the swamps of South Carolina, where black 



54 

codes are enacted, creating Slavery in fact on one hand, 
while they pretended to abolish it in name on the other. 

3. The great criminal lives wherever in high places men 
shout " this is a white man's government;" and it live and 
moves and has a being wherever caste flourishes and torturer 
its victims with the remorselessness of the Spanish Inqui- 
sition. 

Society is, simply, human nature existing in combinations, 
sometimes natural, but generally artificial. It cannot be 
denied that for half a century the American Nation have 
not been homogeneous. The North might be properly 
called the labor States, and the South the capital States. 

With us labor took care of itself, with them habits of 
idleness were perfectly consistent with ideas of dignity. 
Labor was menial. They firmly believed in the curse, but 
not in the nobility of labor. 

My dead, but immortal friend, Henry Winter Davis, him- 
self once a slave-owner, and one of the grandest and purest 
soldiers who ever fought for the liberation of humanity, 
said of the South : 

" It was resolved by them to become a power and cease- 
to be merely an interest. 

"It could be tolerated as an interest, it could not be tol- 
erated as a power, which by political coalition became the 
dominant power of the Nation (the addition of the great 
regions of Florida and Louisiana to the domain of the 
United States, fired the blood of its supporters with the 
determination of ruling). It first asserted itself as a power 
in the great Missouri compromise so long worshiped by all 
men as the emltlem of our peace. Texas was its conquest. 
The compromise of 1850 was the recognition of its equality 
with freedom in disposing of the fortunes and fate of the 
Nation. 

" The repeal of the Missouri compromise was its assertion, 
not merely that it was a power, but that it had power to 
rule. The war in Kansas was its struggle, to assert againsls 
a reluctant people, its right to rule. The Dred Scott 
decision Avas the sanction of its most insolent claims by 
the supreme judicial authority of the Nation before which 
bowed every dissenting voice in the South. 



" It had made for itself a permanent home in the South, a 
home full of ideas and arguments for its maintenance and 
advancement; it seized upon and taught the doctrine of 
State rights as one of its bulwarks." 

(And John C. Calhoun was the wicked and persistent 
evangelist of this pernicious idea, which^ when backed by 
the terrible unity of Southern politicians, and the conscience- 
less tyranny of executive courts, had well nigh taken the 
life of American Liberty.) 

The Dred Scott decision cultivated submission to the local 
authorities, so that in case of collision the men of the South 
might prefer their State to the nation. Slavery was first 
wrong, then excusable, then defensible, then defended by 
Scripture, historical and political arguments 5 then advocated 
and vaunted as the highest development of social organi- 
2iation. 

Every principle of human reason was confounded in the 
deliberate attempt to make right of a wrong. 

It created a new theology, a new history, a new ethnology 
for itself. " They dreaded the intrusive eye of freedom, 
tolerated it only blindfold, and thus firmly imbued with con- 
victions scientifically and logically wrought, with a social 
system strong in arguments for its support, at peace Avith 
their consciences, given over to believe a lie, a territory 
equal in area to the greatest empire in the world — filled 
with an energetic, brilliant, brave and devoted people., 
educated in the idea that the State is supreme and could 
secede at will, and that even if the State had not that right, 
it could sanction, and by its authority, which they were 
bound to obey, excuse all who, under its bidding, took arms 
against the nation; armed against moral reprobation by 
pride — strong against the law of the land in arms, in the 
sympathy of many at the North, in a generation educated 
and devoted to those ideas for which they were ready to die. 
they drew the sword! throwiijg away the scabbard, to: 
assert that slavery is the true corner-stone of freedom. . 



56 

That corner-stone on which they sought to raise a new em- 
pire, now lies crumbled and shattered at the feet of ad- 
vancing freedom." 

The empire is dead, but, alas! slavery lives. Its cat-like 
step walks the courts, and its Judas Benjamins still live on 
this side of the Atlantic. 

Its Janus face and its iron hand, encased in a velvet glove, 
are softly found peeping over the cushions of Northern 
pulpits, and 1 have heard gentle prayers, whispered in words 
worthy of Sydney, the sweet Secretary of Eloquence, in 
thanks to God for haviHg " converted the Southern heart to 
loyalty." Slavery dead ! My God ! No, Sir ! No ! Clasping 
the Bible with handcuffs, and festooning the Cross of Christ 
witii chains, it murders one President at Ford's theatre on 
the anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter, and on the 
anniversary of the day that gave birth to the Father of his 
Country, at another theatre in Washington, slavery clasps 
its collar around the neck of another President, while Sunset 
Cox, of Ohio, with t^raceful mien, gets ready a rehearsal of 
his new play, entitled 

-C^SAR AND MOSES, 

OR 
CROSSING THE RUBICON! 

IN A BASKET OF BCLRUSHES ! 

During the performance, Yallandigham hangs out his flag 
and fires a hundred guns ! The people do not say " amen." 
But let us turn to a more agreeable picture ; for if •' we 
count time by heart-throbs," these have been long and weary 
days in which we have watched the flank movement of a 
pro-slavery army with banners, readily recognizing a new 
foe with an old face. 

We turn from the " nervous man to the men of nerve." 
But when we behold the able and courtly Fessenden, and 
the true-hearted Sumner, whoso fidelity to principle is, to- 
day, the marvel of two worlds, wc sigh as we are forced to 



57 

the conclusion that John C. Breekinridg-e, a refugee and a 
traitor, is supposed to have more power in this Government 
than Maine or Massachusetts. 

But, Mr. President, I propose to return to the considera- 
tion of the resolutions before the Senate. There never was 
any jar or discord between generous sentiments and sound 
policy. Nature never says one thing and wisdom another. 

And when 1 advocate an enactment by Congress which 
will give to every soldier twenty-one years of age, who has 
served liis country since April 14. 1861, the right to vote, 1 
believe such a law would be sanctioned both by good sense 
and by sound policy. 

I may be met with the objection that the Constitution is 
silent upon the question of suffrage, and that this question 
ought to be left to the States themselves. But the Consti- 
tution puts the badge of inequality upon no one. And 
shall we? 

That policy which would call the black to our aid in 
putting down the Rebellion, and then turn him over to the 
charity of the man whom he fought against, and who once 
owned him, must be founded in inequality, injustice and 
infinite meanness. 

" If you did not wish to have the negro hereafter to enjoy 
the rights of a man, why did you bring him on the battle- 
field?'' 

When he could relieve us from an impending draft, we 
did not stop to discuss his right to political privileges then. 
"If he is their and your equal (and Thomas Jefferson said 
the measure of the black man's talent is no measure of his 
rights) on the battle field, in the service of the country, he 
is and should be at the ballot-box, and if he is not your 
equal on the battle-field, tlien you have cheated the United 
States, to the injury of the national cause, to save yourselves 
from service." 

But above all, this question is not purely a question of 
justice and humanity. We are bound by Article IV^, Sec- 



58 

tion 4 of the Constitution, to give to the South a Republican 
form of government. Congress has imposed not conferred 
this paramount duty. 

There cannot in the nature of things be a loyal majority 
in the eleven States in rebellion, where, if jou exclude the 
nameless martyr of East Tennessee, there was found no 
single man to make head against a revolution which very 
soon, in the South, was led by the men who originally 
opposed it. 1 tell you, Sir, there is nothing to hope and 
everything to fear from those States, of which Carl Shurtz, 
the President's appointed agent, says : 

" The loyalty of the masses and most of the leaders of the 
Southern people, consists of submission to necessity. There 
is, except in individual instances, an entire absence of that 
national spirit which forms the basis of true loyalty and 
patriotism. 

" The emancipation of the slaves is submitted to only in 
so far as chattel slavery in the old form could not be kept 
up. But although the freedman is no longer considered 
the property of the individual master, he is considered the 
slave of society, and all independent State legislation will 
share the tendency to make him such. 

" The ordinances abolishing slavery, passed by the Con- 
vention under the pressure of circumstances, will not be 
looked upon as barring the establishment of a new form of 
servitude.'^ 

Alexander Stephens may say on the 22d of February, as 
he did at the inauguration of the Rebellion : " My only 
hope is founded in the virtue, the intelligence and the 
patriotism of the American people." But if he means to 
describe, as doubtless he does, the people with whom he 
lives, what have we to expect of unregenerate rebels, whose 
average civilization is that of the middle ages, and who 
believed or assumed to believe, that the laws of war justi- 
fied starving 60,000 Union prisoners till they died at An- 
dersonville. 

In the States now represented in Congress we rely upon 
the educated intelligence of the people, and not upon such 



59 

bliad servility as that which followed without question the 
great Satrap of Slavery till he was captured among the 
swamps of Carolina, a fugitive in woman's apparel. 

And what can be said of the patriotism of a people who 
hunger and thirst for the ruin of this government they 
have despised and reviled for four years, and now seeking 
its protection blot from our language the word Mankind, 
which enriches it — a word that never passed the lips of 
Plato, Aristotle or Socrates. Shame on the patriotism that 
tells us, " come take away these 4,000,000 of God's creatures 
and expatriate them, or they shall suffer extermination at 
our hand in the coming '• War of Races." This is the same 
spirit that said to Tristram Burgess, '• to-day, to-day let 
New England be blotted out." 

Sir, this is first a question of right. Then it is a question 
of power. It is first a question of morals (for the forces 
always go with the virtues), then it is a question of salvation. 
We are to choose whether we will have a friendly and a 
Republican Government in eleven States lately in rebellion, 
or whether the old Oligarchy shall come back into the 
Union, governing themselves within a year of the time they 
pursued us with fire and sword, and more than this, coming 
back when aided by discontented partizans in the North 
with the privilege of governing us. I am not an alarmist. 
But 1 have lived among the younger leaders of the Rebellion 
and in the Southern States. 1 know their temper, and much 
as I hate their injustice, 1 have a still livelier contempt for 
that hypocrisy here, which under the thin guise of a love for 
" the restored Union," eagerly waits to strike hands with 
the men who headed the Rebellion at the South, when they 
say with a terrible show of truth : 

" Once more 
Erect the standard there of ancieut rigkt, 
Yours be the advantage all, miue the revenge." 

I speak that I do know when I affirm that it has come to 
this — that the question of suffrage is now not so much, or so 
wholly a question of justice and humanity, as it is for all of 



60 

lis a question of 5-20.S and 7-30s. Southern Senators and 
members of Congress will never vote to pay the debt created 
in subjugating them unless you add their debt incurred to 
subjugate us. We need the vote of the colored men, and in 
strengthening the hands of the party of reconstruction it is 
the right intention not the philosophic judgment which 
casts the votes. In the Rebel States we absolutely need 
numbers as well as intelligence. But I am met by the ob- 
jection that the States are in the Union and must regulate 
these questions for themselves. If we grant that, there is 
vitality in the Rebel State governments; and second, that 
they have the right to regulate the question of suffrage, then 
our argument is at an end ; but we make no such admission. 
A " State" is defined to he a " body politic." A Government 
'/ the persons who administer the laws." Well, then, the 
body politic cannot go out and has not gone out of the 
Union, but since the Supreme Court, the recognized arbiter 
of conflict between a State and Federal authority, by the 
voice of all its Judges has unanimously declared that from 
the 13th day of July, 1861, a civil territorial war has ex- 
isted between the United States and the Confederate States ; 
since such war has existed, the State Governments — the 
persons who administer the laws are outside the pale of the 
Constitution, because they become belligerents and enemie 
of the United States. These State Governments, then, have 
ceased to exist. Their suspended animation will know no 
revival. They ceased to exist in law when they renounced 
the Constitution. They ceased to exist in fact because such 
governments were expelled by force of arms. If the Presi- 
dent of the United States counts heads and calls that the 
people, he at once takes the power from Congress, for it is 
the joint action of the House of Representatives, Senate and 
Executive which constitutes Congress, and places it in the 
Executive, where it docs not properly belong. 

That point has thus been ably demonstrated. I ask that 
gentlemen will go and read that great argument of Daniel 
Webster in the Rhode Island case before the Supreme Court 



61 

of the United States, where he met this semi-revolutionary 
attempt to count heads and call that the people, and main- 
tained, and so the Supreme Court judged, when it refused to 
take jurisdiction of the question that the great political law 
of America is that every change of government shall be 
conducted under the supervising authority of some existing 
legislative body, throwing the protection of the law around 
the polls, defining the rights of voters, protecting them in 
the exercise of the elective franchise, guarding against fraud, 
repelling violence, and appointing arbiters to pronounce the 
result, and declare the persons chosen by the people, and we 
say, greatly to the honor of the American people, it would 
take him to the going down of the sun to enumerate the 
instances in which almost every Constitution in the United 
States has been changed, without one ever having been 
changed by a revolutionary process, not under the Eegis of 
law, not guided by pre-existing political authority. He 
maintained it to be the great fundamental principle of the 
American Government that legislation shall guide every 
political change^ and that it assumes that somewhere within 
the United States there is always a permanent organized 
legal authority which shall guide the tottering footsteps of 
those who seek to restore governments which are disorgan- 
ized and broken down. We have then^ Mr. President, 
governments disorganized and broken down. What will we 
do with them ? 

Before I answer that question I shall summon one to 
whom public law is scarcely less indebted but who wrote a 
century later, thatVattel may reiterate with more precision, 
that 

" A civil war ))reaks the bands of society and government, 
or at least, suspends their force and effect; it produces in 
the Nation two independent parties who consider each other 
as enemies, and acknowledge no common judge. These two 
parties, therefore, must necessarily be considered as consti- 
tuting, at least, for a time, two distinct societies." 

Need I appeal to Requielme, who declares that when a 



62 

part of a State takes up arms against the government, if it 
is sufficiently strong to resist its action, and to constitute 
t^o parties of equally balanced forces, the existence of civil 
war is thenceforward determined. If the conspirators 
against the government have not the means of assuming this 
position their movement does not pass beyond a Rebellion, 
as true civil war breaks the bonds of society by dividing it 
in fact into two independent societies. It is for this con- 
sideration that we treat of it in international law. Since 
each party forming as it were a separate Nation, both should 
be regarded as subject to the laws of war. This subjection 
to the law of Nations is the more necessary in civil wars, 
since these, by nourishing more hatred and resentment than 
foreign wars, require more the execution of the law of 
Nations in order to moderate their ravages. 

In God's government as well as in every wise human 
government, the enforcements of obligations are coupled 
with and inseparable from the enjoyment of rights. With 
what semblance of reason can people administering govern- 
ments in place of those extinguished by war claim the rights 
and powers of a State under a Constitution, which they have 
for years scorned, derided and despised ? 

After destroying that army which I have said in solid 
column would nearly reach around the globe they would 
modestly ask (the vanquished in conference with the victor) 
leave to submit, lor their own approval, the laws under 
which they desire to hold their property and enjoy every 
right undisturbed as if there had never been any Rebellion. 
Dare we trust implicitly that these men will with cheerful 
resignation come back under a flag which they hate? but 
which we love, ten thousand times better than ever, because 
€very stain on its folds has been washed white in tlie blood 
of the brave. 

And when I contemplate the solemn questions of the hour, 
when I stared, astonished at the indecent haste with which 
red-handed Rebellion pleading most ])iteously a new-born 



63 

love for the Constitution ; and when I see men in high 
places " wincing under Southern thunder," just as American 
politicians have winced, and wincing yielded, for eighty- 
seven years, then I begin to tremble for my country. 

It is no solace for our fears that Mr. Alexander Stephens 
so recently said: " Should all the States be brought back to 
their practical relations under the Constitution, we shall 
have still left the essentials of free government contained 
and embodied in^the old Constitution untouched and unim- 
paired. 

1 may be excused from trusting too far, these gift bearing 
Greeks ! 

I fail to discern that candor in the late Vice President's 
carefully prepared oration, spread upon the journals of both 
Houses of the Georgia Legislature, which so touchingly 
turned the periods of his last and most eloquent plea for the 
Union of our fathers in 1860. (Our Southern friends under- 
stand the play, " She Stoops to Conquer.") 

I would recall to his mind his Milledgeville letter, in 
which he says more than four years ago : " If everything 
else has to go down let our untarnished honor, at least sur- 
vive the wreck." 

If they get back on their own terms, they themselves have 
predicted that the next war will be inside the Union for 
Southern rights. Sir, Southern honor did not survive the 
14th day of April It becomes us to meet these questions 
without passion, but with that courage which is often the 
loftiest prudence. The supreme hour for the nation has 
struck. 

If we are just and fear not, we can teach the men so eager 
for the power they voluntarily abandoned, that '• Conquering 
may prove as lordly and complete a thing in lifting upward 
as in crushing low." 

If the Conflict which is to decide whether the peace we 
have won by the sword is worth having and has come to 
stay ; if that conflict must come, let it come. Let it come now, 
for with God's help and man's fidelity we will never, never 




012 026 389 4^ (^4 



be recreant to that trust sanctified to us and to the world 
by the valor of the dead, and dear to us all by the sacrifices 
made by the living. We cannot, we will not, we dare not 
omit to do that which the safety of the Union requires. The 
statesman is never regardless of consequences. But the man 
who is tiue to himself and just to others accepts all conse- 
quences which follow the discharge of public duty. As for 
myself 1 belong neither to the party of Cassar nor to that of 
Brutus. America will never be cursed with a Dictator, and 
assassination does not thrive since the days of the Roman 
Senate. We are engaged in a conflict of ideas nobler and 
more far reaching than the clash of bayonets. 

If Congress does not give us Manhood Suffrage, we will 
have an Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting repre- 
sentation except upon the basis of those who are entitled to 
vote. The deep throbbing of the popular heart cannot be 
baulked in its purpose. If I do not live to see it my children 
will live to behold the day when no man shall be denied a 
political right on account of his complexion. A democracy 
and an aristocracy of sentiment and manners I can under- 
stand. But a Democracy of Laws which compels the able- 
bodied to bear arms and pay taxes, but prohibits the able 
minded from having either vote or voice in the policies 
which control them, is a monstrosity in legislation, a false- 
hood in politics, and a sandy foundation for a Republic. 

My soul expands to a Divine altitude when 1 contemplate 
my Country, oft baffled, oft defeated, but finally triumphing 
over all her oppressors. And in my mind's eye I behold the 
granite base from whence rise the pillars of Constitutional, 
Republican and Universal Liberty in America. Its founda- 
tion is broader and its columns more beautiful than the 
Grecian Parthenon, upon whose snowy front the sunsets of 
two thousand years have left their golden stains ; and upon 
this granite rock, baptized with the blood of our best and 
bravest, will be written by each succeeding generation in 
letters of light that imperishable truth of history : There is 
no Poivn- without Justice. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 026 389 4 ^ 



